Duncan Black

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Duncan Black (born May 23, 1908 in Motherwell , † January 14, 1991 in Paignton ) was a Scottish economist .

Duncan Black is considered to be the co-founder of the New Political Economy . Alongside Kenneth Arrow, he is the main founder and pioneer of modern social choice theory . His main work is the book "The Theory of Committees and Elections" published in 1958. In it he examines, among other things, voting procedures ( Condorcet method , Borda election ) and election problems ( Condorcet paradox ). In the second part of the book "History of the Mathematical Theory of Committees and Elections (excluding proportional representation)" he introduces authors and their forgotten texts on elections: Jean Charles Borda , Marquis de Condorcet , Pierre-Simon Laplace , Edward John Nanson , Francis Galton and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson .

Duncan Black is considered to be the real discoverer of the "median voter theory", see median voter model , which he presented in the 1948 article "On the Rationale of Group Decision-making". In an essay in 1929, Harold Hotelling , while searching for the conditions for a stable equilibrium in the duopoly case, explained why two providers (companies, but also e.g. political parties) differ minimally along a main street and occupy the same center point want. However, the concept and the term "median optimum" , which today gives the name to the model most commonly attributed to Hotelling, goes back to Duncan Black . He also established the acceptance of unicodal preferences . For Black, in the discussion under which conditions intransitive voting results can be excluded, decisions in the committee type (small group) were in the foreground.

His findings on the occurrence of cyclical majorities became more widely known , especially with Kenneth Arrow's theorem of impossibility ("Social Choice and Individual Values", first publication 1951), which generalized the Condorcet paradox .

The model or theory of the median voter and the assumed analogy of political and economic life only became popular outside the economic and mathematical disciplines through Anthony Downs ' relatively easy-to-read book " An Economic Theory of Democracy " (1957).

Duncan Black - in contrast to the names of Harold Hotelling , Anthony Downs or Kenneth Arrow - was for a long time not well received in teaching, research, journalism and the public and was overshadowed by the development and growth of the public choice approach Authors such as B. Gordon Tullock , James M. Buchanan , William A. Niskanen , Mancur Olson and others, although his investigations had laid the decisive basis for the analysis of the political process with economic methods. It was only after Black's death that his crucial importance for the establishment of the median voter theorem and the public choice school slowly became apparent again.

"Turning to his actual work, he quite literally is the founder of public choice. The first six articles which can be regarded as public choice were all written by him. Further, Kenneth Arrow, then a very young member of the economics profession, was given one of his papers to referee by Econometrica and this may well have attracted his attention to the problems which made him famous. He gives considerable credit to Black in that book. Anthony Downs was a student of Arrow who wrote his pioneering book as a doctoral dissertation under Arrow. We have here a fairly clearcut chain of influence. "

In 1980 he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1989 of the British Academy .

Works (selection)

Books

  • Duncan Black: The Incidence of Income Taxes . Macmillan, London 1939.
  • Duncan Black and RA Newing: Committee Decisions With Complementary Valuation . William Hodge, London 1951.
  • Duncan Black: The Theory of Committees and Elections . Cambridge University Press, London and New York 1958.

Essays

  • Ronald S. Edwards and Duncan Black: Notes on the British Income Tax and Company Reserves . In: The Review of Economic Studies . Vol. 5, No. 2, 1938, pp. 114-122, (PDF) .
  • Duncan Black: The Subsidy to British Farming in Respect of Income Tax . In: Economica . New Series, Vol. 5, No. 17, 1938, pp. 33-44, (PDF) .
  • Duncan Black: On the Rationale of Group Decision-making . In: Journal of Political Economy . Vol. 56, No. 1, 1948, pp. 23-34, doi : 10.1086 / 256633 , (PDF) .
  • Duncan Black: Un approcio alla teorìa delle decisioni di comitato . In: Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economica . Vol. 7, 1948, pp. 262-284.
  • Duncan Black: The Decision of a Committee Using a Special Majority . In: Econometrica . Vol. 16, No. 3, 1948, pp. 245-261, (PDF) .
  • Duncan Black: The Elasticity of Committee Decisions with an Alternating Size Majority . In: Econometrica . Vol. 16, No. 3, 1948, pp. 262-270, (PDF) .
  • Duncan Black: The Elasticity of Committee Decisions with Alterations in the Members' Preference Schedules . In: South African Journal of Economics , Vol. 17, No. 1, 1949, pp. 88-102, doi : 10.1111 / j.1813-6982.1949.tb01530.x .
  • Duncan Black: The Theory of Elections in Single-Member Constituencies . In: Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science . Vol. 15, No. 2, 1949, pp. 158-175, (PDF) .
  • Duncan Black: Some Theoretical Schemes of Proportional Representation . In: Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science . Vol. 15, No. 3, 1949, pp. 334-343, (PDF) .
  • Duncan Black: The Unity of Political and Economic Science . In: The Economic Journal . Vol. 60, No. 239, 1950, pp. 506-514, (PDF) .
  • Duncan Black: A simple theory of non-cooperative games with ordinal utilities (1) . In: Public Choice . Vol. 1, No. 1, 1966, pp. 1-48, doi : 10.1007 / BF01718987 .
  • Duncan Black: The central argument in Lewis Carroll's The Principles of Parliamentary Representation . In: Public Choice . Vol. 3, No. 1, 1967, pp. 1-17, doi : 10.1007 / BF01719133 .
  • Duncan Black: Lewis Carroll and the Theory of Games . In: American Economic Review . Vol. 59, No. 2, 1969, pp. 206-210, (PDF) .
  • Duncan Black: On Arrow's Impossibility Theorem . In: Journal of Law and Economics . Vol. 12, No. 2, 1969, pp. 227-248, doi : 10.1086 / 466667
  • Duncan Black: Lewis Carroll and the Cambridge Mathematical School of PR; Arthur Cohen and Edith Denman . In: Public Choice . Vol. 8, No. 1, 1970, pp. 1-28, doi : 10.1007 / BF01718502 .
  • Duncan Black: Partial Justification of the Borda Count . In: Public Choice . Vol. 28, No. 1, 1976, pp. 1-15, doi : 10.1007 / BF01718454 .
  • Duncan Black: Arrow's Work and the Normative Theory of Committees . In: Journal of Theoretical Politics . Vol. 3, No. 3, 1991, pp. 259-276, doi : 10.1177 / 0951692891003003002

supporting documents

  1. ^ Duncan Black: On the Rationale of Group Decision-making . In: Journal of Political Economy . Vol. 56, No. 1, 1948, pp. 23-34, doi : 10.1086 / 256633 , (PDF) In the article he announced: “The theory will be set out at greater length in a forthcoming book on The Pure Science of Politics ".
  2. ^ Harold Hotelling: Stability in Competition . In: The Economic Journal . Vol. 39, No. 153, pp. 41-57.
  3. ↑ In 1959, Anthony Downs wrote in a review of Black's “Theory of Committees and Elections”: “Black's work shows an ingenious and competent handling of the problems he poses. However, he does not present a complete theory of either committees or elections because he does not deal with big enough problems. [...] Black has furnished the bedroom of political theory before the house has been designed, and the elegant furniture looks lonely standing there by itself. However it is well built, and the tools he used to make it may prove useful when the house is constructed. " The Journal of Political Economy , Vol. 67, No. 2, 1959, pp. 211-212, here p. 212 .
  4. ^ Gordon Tullock: Duncan Black: The Founding Father: 23 May 1908-14 January 1991 . In: Public Choice . Vol. 71, No. 3, 1991, pp. 125-128, here p. 125.
  5. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter B. (PDF; 1.2 MB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved May 6, 2020 .
  6. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed May 6, 2020 .

literature

  • Gordon L. Brady: Duncan Black and Ronald Coase: A Lifelong Friendship Rooted in Economics . In: Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice . Vol. 22, No. 1/2, 2004, pp. 53-72.
  • Gordon L. Brady and Gordon Tullock (Eds.): Formal Contributions to the Theory of Public Choice: The Unpublished Works of Duncan Black . Kluwer, Boston et al. 1995.
  • Ronald Harry Coase : † Duncan Black, 1908–1991 . In: Proceedings of the British Academy . Vol. 82 (1992 Lectures and Memoirs), 1993, pp. 353-365 ( PDF ).
  • Ronald Harry Coase: Essays on Economics and Economists . University of Chicago Press., Chicago et al. 1994.
  • Bernard Grofman: The Theory of Committees and Elections: The Legacy of Duncan Black . In: Gordon Tullock (Ed.): Towards a Science of Politics: Papers in Honor of Duncan Black . Public Choice Center, Blacksburg 1981, pp. 11-57, (PDF), 2.7 MB .
  • Bernard Grofman: Black, Duncan . In: John Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman (Eds.): The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics . Vol. 1, Macmillan, London, 1987, pp. 250-251.
  • Bernard Grofman: Black's single-peakedness condition . In: Charles K. Rowley and Friedrich Schneider (Eds.): Encyclopedia of Public Choice . Part 2, Springer, New York, 2003, pp. 367-369, doi : 10.1007 / 978-0-306-47828-4_42 .
  • Iain McLean, Alistair McMillan, and Burt L. Monroe: Duncan Black and Lewis Carroll . In: Journal of Theoretical Politics . Vol. 7, No. 2, 1995, pp. 107-123, doi : 10.1177 / 0951692895007002001 .
  • Iain S. McLean, Alistair McMillan, and Burt L. Monroe (Eds.): A Mathematical Approach to Proportional Representation. Duncan Black on Lewis Carroll , Kluwer, Boston et al. 1996.
  • Iain S. McLean, Alistair McMillan, and Burt L. Monroe (Eds.): The Theory of Committees and Elections by Duncan Black, and Committee Decisions with Complementary Valuation by Duncan Black and RA Newing. Revised Second Editions . Kluwer, Boston et al. 1998.
  • Charles K. Rowley: Duncan Black (1908-1991) . In: Charles K. Rowley and Friedrich G. Schneider (Eds.): Readings in Public Choice and Constitutional Political Economy . Springer, New York 2008, pp. 77-83, doi : 10.1007 / 978-0-387-75870-1_4 .
  • Gordon Tullock (Ed.): Towards a Science of Politics: Papers in Honor of Duncan Black . Public Choice Center, Blacksburg 1981.
  • Gordon Tullock: Duncan Black: The Founding Father: 23 May 1908-14 January 1991 . In: Public Choice . Vol. 71, No. 3, 1991, pp. 125-128, doi : 10.1007 / BF00155731 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Black, Duncan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish economist
DATE OF BIRTH May 23, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Motherwell
DATE OF DEATH January 14, 1991
Place of death Paignton