Axioms of Cooperative Decision Making provides a unified and comprehensive study of welfarism, cooperative games, public decision making, and voting and social choice theory - technically heterogeneous subjects that are linked by common axioms. Hervé Moulin studies these areas from an axiomatic perspective. Every axiom conveys a certain ethical principle (e.g. 'one man one vote', or 'to each according to his contribution'). Axiomatic theory examines the compatibility of various combinations of axioms. The book describes recent successes of this method. It gives many examples of the axiomatic approach, ranging from the construction of numerical indices for measuring inequality, to the pricing of a regulated monopoly, to the comparison of various voting rules. The book will be useful to mathematical modellers, especially those interested in economics and political science.

‘A most valuable contribution to the essence of the social science, and especially of economics: how agents, be they collective or individual, make choices.’

Georges Bernard - Centre National de la Récherche Scientifique, Paris

‘This book is a real pedagogical tour de force ... it is beautifully produced thanks to the Econometric Society and Cambridge University Press. It is not only highly recommended but, in the reviewer’s opinion, obligatory reading for every theoretically-inclined economist or political scientist.’

Maurice Salles - University of Caen