Abstract for 2008 Honors Colloquium
Lauren Merrill
Economics
"A Characterization of Strategy-Proof Rules over the Condorcet Domain"
Social choice theory is concerned with the analysis of collective decision making processes, such as the election of a department chair. Given a particular procedure for making a collective decision, an important questions arises: could be this procedure be manipulated by a clever voter? The Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem posits that when voters have unrestricted preferences over a set of feasible alternatives, the only rule that cannot be manipulated is dictatorial rule. However, if we restrict voters preferences the class of rules that cannot be manipulated may increase. We therefore consider restriction to the Condorcet domain, and characterize strategy-proof rules.
