professor arrow
Kenneth Arrow, Nobel-Winning Economist Whose Influence Spanned Decades, Dies at 95
The backdrop for Professor Arrow's influential early work was the centuries-long recognition that majority voting can produce arbitrary outcomes. Consider a legislature choosing its leader from among three candidates: Alice, Betty and Harry. If the legislature were to vote first on Alice versus Betty, with the winner running against Harry, it could come to a different decision than had it first started by voting on Alice versus Harry. Because the order with which the legislature takes votes is arbitrary, the ultimate winner of this system of majority voting becomes arbitrary. That puts politics in an awkward corner.