University of Kansas, Fall 2007
Philosophy 666: Rational Choice Theory
Ben Eggleston—eggleston@ku.edu
preview of test on social choice theory
The test will be given in class on Friday, November 30. You do not need to
bring anything, except for something to write with; this will be a closed-book,
closed-notes test, and you will be provided with paper on which to write your
answers. At the beginning of the exam period, the following instructions will be
written on the board:
- Please put away everything except for something to write with.
- This test may be graded on a curve.
- Please number each of your 10 answers
conspicuously.
Also, you will be asked to close and/or put away all books, notebooks,
newspapers, calculators, computers, cell phones, and other possible sources of
inappropriate aid. The
instructions at the top of the test will read as follows:
- Answer all of the following questions on the answer sheets provided. You can write on this
list of
questions, but credit will be awarded only for answers written on answer
sheets.
- Do not access any book, notebook, newspaper, calculator, computer, cell
phone, or other possible source of inappropriate aid during the test, do not
leave the room before you are finished taking the test, and be sure to finish
the test within this 50-minute testing period—no credit will be given for any
work done after you access any possible source of inappropriate aid, after you
leave the room for any reason, or after the end of the testing period.
- When you are finished, be sure your name is written on each of your answer
sheets, and turn them in. You do not need to turn in this list of questions.
Regarding the content of the test, I anticipate that the following will be
the case, but I reserve the right to depart from this plan if circumstances seem
to warrant it:
- There will be 10 questions worth 10 points each.
- Questions 1–6 will pertain to the conditions on social welfare functions
listed on p. 1 of handout 24 and whether they are satisfied or violated by
various partially- or fully-specified social welfare functions.
- Question 7 will pertain to Arrow’s impossibility theorem and its strength
or weakness compared to another, hypothetical, impossibility theorem (kind of like question
51 on the problems for credit, but somewhat more complicated).
- Question 8 will pertain to part of the proof of lemma 1. (See section
25a.3 of handout 25a, especially but not exclusively step 6. If you don’t want
to read handout 25a, you can rely on your notes from class.)
- Question 9 will pertain to proving the impossibility of a Paretian
liberal.
- Question 10 will pertain to some material in sections V–IX of Sen’s “Liberty
and Social Choice.”
In addition to studying the assigned reading, class-participation questions,
and the the problems for credit, you could also advantageously prepare for this test by
answering the questions on the test on social choice theory that I gave in my Fall
2006 section of this course. That test, and the answer key for it, are at the
web site that I set up for that course, at http://web.ku.edu/~utile/courses/rct2.
Scored tests will be returned in class on Monday, December 3. If you do not get your test back from me by the end of
this semester, you can still pick it up if you see me by June 30, 2008. After
that date, I may discard unclaimed work from this semester.