Foreword

Excerpt

Preliminary versions of most of the papers in this special issue of Social Choice and Welfare were presented in a conference (“The History of Social Choice from Condorcet to Arrow and Beyond”) organized by Prasanta K. Pattanaik, Maurice Salles and Kotaro Suzumura. Exceptions are the paper by Marc Fleurbaey and Philippe Mongin, and Ian Little's interview by Prasanta Pattanaik and Maurice Salles. The conference was held at the University of Caen in October 2002. We celebrated then the 50th anniversary of the publication of Kenneth Arrow's book which marked the (re)birth of social choice theory or, more precisely, the birth of modern social choice theory. At the same time, Kenneth Arrow gave the first Caen Condorcet Lectures. Professor Arrow's Condorcet Lectures will appear in Volume 2 of the Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare. These lectures are given every year by major scholars on a specific topic within social choice theory and welfare economics. …