Valued Opinions or Opinionated Values: The Double Aggregation Problem (Now published in K. Basu, P. Pattanaik and K. Suzumura (eds.), Choice, Welfare and Development: Essays in Honour of Amartya Sen (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994).)
Published 1992
A new and powerful dictatorship result is presented. It is well known that in social choice problems, the negativism of the original Arrow result can be overcome by admitting information based on interpersonal comparisons. But what if individuals in society have different opinions about htese interpersonal comparisons> This paper shows that even in the most favourable circumstances, one individual's opinions must be dictatorial - social choice can be based upon an evaluation of gains and losses to different individuals but must be based upon one individual's opinion about those gains and lossses.