Kenneth Arrow was born in New York City, New York on August 23rd,
1921. He attended City College of New York for his
undergrad, Colombia University for graduate (while doing research at the University
of Chicago), and earned his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1951. He is currently a Joan Kenny Professor of Economics and Professor of Operations Research, Emeritus at Stanford University.
He won a Nobel Prize in Economics with John Hicks making him the youngest person to receive this award. Aside from that, he came up with multiple theorems, one of which was Arrow's impossibility theorem
which stated that "If we exclude the possibility of interpersonal
comparisons of utility, then the only methods of passing from individual tastes
to social preferences which will be satisfactory and which will be defined for
a wide range of sets of individual orderings are either imposed or
dictatorial."
Prior to taking this class, I had not heard of Kenneth Arrow and his many contributions in Economics.
I do not think we have touched on this
topic in class. We touched on this idea of voters leaning towards X or
Y in my BADM 310 class, Management and Organizational Behavior. We discussed this idea of a group of voters
leaning towards either the “x” side or “y” side. As Kenneth Arrow states in his
theorem, if the voter prefers x over y,
then the group prefers x over y. Say the
voter has no preference between the two groups, then the group’s preference
between the two also remains unchanged.
Other theories include the General Equilibrium Theory, Fundamental theorems of welfare economics, Endogenous-growth theory and had many advancements in Informational Economics. General Equilibrium Theory is the study of a number
of economic variables, their interrelations and interdependences for
understanding the working of the economic system as a whole. This is
relative to Econ 490 because this is the basis for Economics as a whole.
Please put in post titles in the future. It is much easier to reference a post that way.
ReplyDeleteI actually made mention of Arrow's Theorem in the syllabus. The question is how to aggregate the preferences of the members of the organization into a preference by the organization as a whole. When members have preferences that don't align perfectly, as will often be the case, then Arrow's Theorem tells us there is no fixed rule by which to generate an organization's preference. On the one hand, this is disappointing. On the other, it gives a raison d'etre for our class.