Restricted domains, arrow-social welfare functions and noncorruptible and non-manipulable social choice correspondences: The case of private alternatives

Abstract

An n-person social choice problem is considered in which the alternatives are n dimensional vectors, with the ith component of such a vector being the part of the alternatives affecting individual i alone. Assuming that individuals are selfish (individual i must be indifferent between any two alternatives with the same components), that they may be indifferent among alternatives and that each individual may choose his preferences out of a different set of permissible preferences, we prove that any set of restricted domains of preferences admits an n person non-dictatorial Arrow-type social welfare function if and only if it admits a two-person Arrow-type social welfare function: we characterize all the sets of restricted domains of preferences which admit two-person Arrow-type social welfare functions (and therefore also admit n-person Arrow-type social welfare functions) and then we prove that we also characterized all the sets of restricted domains of preferences which admit nondictatorial, nonmanipulable, noncorruptible and rational social choice correspondences.