Social Choice: The Neighborhood Effect‪.‬

Introduction Policy makers often enact social policies with the expressed goal of making society better off. Likewise, most religions and/or religious movements include a common goal of social improvement. In order to assess positive statements regarding the effectiveness of a policy or program improving social welfare, economists and philosophers have relied on social choice theory. Social choice is useful for analyzing the implications of a certain allocation of resources. Even as economists have been more willing to make normative statements regarding economic policy, the rigorous study of social choice theory has been in decline. (1)