A characterization of single‐peaked preferences via random social choice functions

• Main Authors: CHATTERJI, Shurojit, SEN, Arunava, ZENG, Huaxia
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2016
• Subjects: Random social choice functions; strategy-proofness; compromise; single-peaked preferences; Economics; Economic Theory
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/1844; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soe_research/article/2843/viewcontent/Shurojit_s_Journal_Article.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This paper proves the following result: every path-connected domain of preferences that admits a strategy-proof, unanimous, tops-only random social choice function satisfying a compromise property is single-peaked. Conversely, every single-peaked domain admits a random social choice function satisfying these properties. Single-peakedness is defined with respect to arbitrary trees. The paper provides a justification of the salience of single-peaked preferences and evidence in favor of the Gul conjecture (Barber\303\240 2010).