22-40.020 Social Choice and Welfare

Instructors: Prof. Dr. Anke Gerber

Event type: Interactive class

Displayed in timetable as: PEP3

Hours per week: 3

Credits: 6,0

Language of instruction: English

Min. | Max. participants: - | 51

More information:
Registration period for first-semester students Mon, 10 October 2022, 9 am to Thu, 13 October 2022, 4 pm

Comments/contents:
The theory of social choice and welfare deals with collective decision making and the foundations of welfare economics. The course centers on the question of how a group of individuals, e.g. society, should aggregate individual preferences in order to take decisions. We will analyze the fundamental conflict between different normative criteria which leads to famous impossibility results. Further topics include the strategic manipulation of collective choice rules and distributive justice.

Learning objectives:
Students

• know different normative criteria for collective decision making
  
• understand the conceptual problems in the analysis of distributional justice and welfare
  
• know the formal methods and main results of social choice theory
  
• can apply the theory to practical decision problems
  

Didactic concept:

• The course takes place in presence (on site). It consists of weekly lectures on Monday and bi-weekly interactive sessions on Tuesday, where students present their solutions problem sets.
  
• Olat: All course materials (lecture slides, problem sets etc.) will be upoaded on the platform Olat and all announcements will be published on Olat. There is also a chat in Olat where students can ask questions and discuss the course material with the professor and with other students.
  
• Lecture Videos: Screencasts of the lecture from the winter semester 2021/22 are available on Lecture2Go. The password is published in Olat.
  
• Interactive Sessions: Every other week a problem set will be uploaded in Olat which will be discussed on Tuesday in the following week. Students are supposed to solve the problem sets before attending the session. They can post questions in the chat in Olat. If needed the professor will provide assistance.
  
• Bonus for the exam: Every student has the opportunity to submit a written solution to a problem set once, or, alternatively, to present his or her solution in the session where the problem set is being discussed. The mark for the presentation or written solution can upgrade the mark of the final exam (conditional on pass) by a maximum of 0.7. The solution must be submitted as PDF in the participant folder in Olat the day before the problem set is  discussed in the session on Tuesday. The submitted solution must be single-authored. If two students submit identical solutions which are just copies of one another none of them will get an upgrade.
  
• Tutorial: There is an accompanying student-led tutorial for the course which takes place bi-weekly on Wednesday, 8-10 a.m., VMP 5, room 2101/2105 starting on October 26. The tutor is Tim Schnelle. The tutorial offers an additional opportunity to clarify questions and to practice the solution of problems.
  
• Office hours: Students who have questions on the lecture, problem sets or preparation for the exam are welcome to make an appointment with Prof. Gerber. Regular office hours are on Thursday, 2.00-3.00 p.m. To make an appointment please send an email to anke.gerber@uni-hamburg.de.
  

Literature:
Textbooks

Arrow, K. J. (2nd. ed. 1963) Social Choice and Individual Values, John Wiley & Sons, New York
Gaertner, W. (2009) A Primer in Social Choice Theory, Oxford University Press, New York (Main Textbook)
Gilboa, I. (2010) Rational Choice, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Kelly, S. K. (1988) Social Choice Theory: An Introduction, Springer, Berlin
Sen, A. K. (1970) Collective Choice and Social Welfare, Holden-Day, San Francisco, republished 1979 by North-Holland, Amsterdam

Additional examination information:
There will be two exams. Check STiNE for the exact dates and format of the exams.