Empirical and computational approaches to collective choice: introduction to a special issue

Abstract

This special issue examines empirical and computational approaches to collective choice, the aggregation of individual preferences to form a public or social choice via some aggregation rule. Some of the aggregation rules considered herein include Borda rule, rank sum aggregation, and majority rule. Arrow (1951) demonstrated that axiomatic rationality at the individual level cannot assure freedom from aggregation paradoxes in collective choice, and this special issue considers several novel data sets and computational and experimental methods to assess the robustness of contemporary aggregation rules and settings. The collected papers provide much-needed evidence in a field that has traditionally presented empirical challenges.