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Kenneth Arrow
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Kenneth Arrow is a Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1972 “for pioneering contributions to general economic equilibrium theory and welfare theory.” Arrow began his graduate study in economics and statistics at Columbia University. He has held positions on the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics, at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and Stanford University. His research, apart from social choice theory, has focused on general economic equilibrium. The profound transformation of the general equilibrium theory is marked by his groundbreaking work. He helped open new productive paths for research in this area, and in so doing, has made fundamental contributions to the renewal of the theory.
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Kenneth Arrow is the Joan Kenney Professor of Economics and Professor of Operations Research, emeritus; a CHP/PCOR fellow; and an FSI senior fellow by courtesy. He is a Nobel Prize-winning economist whose work has been primarily in economic theory and operations, focusing on areas including social choice theory, risk bearing, medical economics, general equilibrium analysis, inventory theory, and the economics of information and innovation. He was one of the first economists to note the existence of a learning curve, and he ... showed that under certain conditions an economy reaches a general equilibrium. In 1972, together with Sir John Hicks, he won the Nobel Prize in economics, for his pioneering contributions to general equilibrium theory and welfare theory.
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Kenneth Arrow and Gérard Debreu have throughout their careers continuously produced ideas at the very frontier of economics. Together, they have made unparalleled contributions on the properties of general equilibrium systems in economics, the study of collective choice and welfare economics.
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In August 1950, Kenneth Arrow published a paper in The Journal of Political Economy proving a rather startling fact. Roughly, what he proved is that there is no perfect voting system. Of course, this is enormously important for democratic theory and economics, since it undermines the basis of representative democracy and free market economics. However, the theorem is little known and less understood by the majority of people, and this entry is intended to rectify that. The first two sections give an intuitive feel for Arrow's possibility theorem (little to no maths), the third section gives some discussion of the relevancy of the possibility theorem to the world, and the last three sections give a more precise, rigorous mathematical explanation. If you're not happy with maths, skip the last three sections.
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Abstract: Kenneth Arrow proved in 1950 that, given a precise notion of reasonable, the only reasonable social choice function is dictatorship. As this is unsatisfying, recent work has begun to analyze which alternative voting scheme is best. This talk will discuss Arrow's theorem, what "best" might mean for a social choice procedure, and a geometric analysis of one particular family of social choice procedures.
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In other pioneering research, Arrow investigated the problems caused by asymmetric information in markets. In many transactions, one party (usually the seller) has more information about the product being sold than the other party. Asymmetric information creates incentives for the party with more information to cheat the party with less information; as a result, a number of market structures have developed, including warranties and third party authentication, which enable markets with asymmetric information to function. Arrow analysed this issue for medical care (a 1963 paper entitled "Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care," in the American Economic Review); later researchers investigated many other markets, particularly second-hand assets, online auctions and insurance.
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Kenneth Arrow