Postdoc in economics

Descrizione

Testo originale dell'annuncio (in inglese)

Position description Position identification Title of post : Postdoc in economics Type of contract : Postdoctoral contract under public law as provided for in Article L.412-4 of the Research Code Category (A,B or C) : Contract/project period : 12 months Expected date of employment : December 1st 2026 or earlier Proportion of work : 100% Workplace : BETA (Bureau d’Économie Théorique et Appliquée) Desired level of education : PhD Experience required : Max 3 years of postdoctoral experience by the recrutement date Contact(s) for information on the position (identity, position, e-mail address, telephone) : Sina Badiei ( sina.badiei@unistra.fr ) Date of publication : August 28th 2026 Closing date for the receipt of applications : October 10th 2026 Research project or operation Since Kenneth Arrow proposed his impossibility theorem in Social Choice and Individual Values (1951), numerous theoretical debates have examined various strategies for circumventing his demonstration of the impossibility of any non-dictatorial social choice. These strategies often consist in weakening, in different ways, one of the theorem’s conditions: condition U (unrestricted domain), condition P (the weak Pareto principle), condition I (independence of irrelevant alternatives), and condition D (non-dictatorship). The condition of the “unrestricted” or “universal” domain is the first step to guarantee “citizens’ sovereignty” by allowing any conceivable ranking of social alternatives, thereby recognizing the fully subjective character of individual preferences. This concept of subjective preferences has become central in economics since the subjectivist turn inaugurated by Vilfredo Pareto, and especially since Lionel Robbins’s famous Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science. Influenced by Ludwig von Mises, Robbins argues that, unlike non-scientific disciplines such as philosophy and ethics, which assess the normative foundations of how people choose or ought to choose, economics must treat preferences as given subjective facts that require no further evaluation. In his analysis of the “unrestricted domain” in Social Choice and Individual Values , Arrow first examines Duncan Black’s work on single-peaked preferences. He concludes that such preferences show that “that mathematically, at least, it is possible to construct suitable social welfare functions if we feel entitled to say in advance that the tastes of individuals fall within certain prescribed realm of similarity” (Arrow 2012/1951, 81). He then gives a more substantive content to what similarity in the domain of individual preferences may imply by making a distinction between “social decisions” and "social ends”: “it could be held that, since ultimate ends arise out of biological and cultural needs, they are, in part at least, objective. … It may be that the biological and cultural basis of ultimate ends limits preferences about them sufficiently so that a social welfare function can be formed” (Arrow 2012/1951, 87). Restricting the domain of preferences makes it possible to exclude preference profiles likely to generate contradictions with the conditions of Arrow’s theorem, since the impossibility theorem results from preference profiles that generate Condorcet cycles or require dictatorial decision-making. By eliminating these profiles, while still allowing a broad range of preferences to facilitate genuinely collective decision-making, one can construct non-dictatorial social welfare functions. Although the contributions of social choice theory—and especially computational social choice—have been largely neglected by ecological economists, the idea that it may be legitimate to impose limits on the form of individual preferences strongly resonates with one of the most central theses of some ecological economists: Because almost all individuals prioritize the satisfaction of their basic needs over their subjective desires, public institutions should not hesitate to limit the pursuit