Social Choice Session 23 Carmen Pasca and John Hey Mattia de Grassi di Pianura

Session 23: Assessment The purpose of this session is to talk mainly about assessment. You can be assessed either by a conventional written examination or by a Group Project. Italian bureaucracy requires in either case that you are given an oral examination and that the marks are verbalized. For us the verbalizazzione is the oral examination. We do not like this procedure but are obliged to follow it.

Dates and formalities The first written exam is at on Friday the 10 th of June The first verbalizazzione is on Wednesday the 15 th of June at 9.00 for those who took the written exam and at for the Groups. We will also verbalize those students who cannot come on the 15th at on the 10 th. Those students who want to be verbalized at this time MUST get approval from us in advance. We will examine groups in sequence but the members of the groups individually. There might be slight variations in marks within each group. The second written exam is at 9.00 on Friday the 1 st of July 2011 and it will be verbalized that afternoon. Group Projects should be sent electronically to all three of us one week before the date of the verbalizazzione.

Group Projects 1 Groups are endogenously-formed and self-policing; docenti will not get involved. All members of a group will get the group mark plus of minus a small individual variation. Projects should be around 20 to 25 A4 double- spaced pages in Times Roman 12 or Calibri 11 font. Pages should be numbered and sections clearly marked. They should be sent to and a week before the appropriate

Group Projects 2 Project titles should be in the form of a question. Ideally titles should be agreed with the docenti. The purpose of a project is to answer the question in the title. Docenti can help to a limited extent: agreeing on the title and the structure, but not the detail. (Note our conflict: on the one hand, we are teachers; on the other, assessors.)

Good and Bad titles (from last year) If we decide to establish a new nation, which legal system would we choose? Ill and Poor: Better it to be in the UK or in France? Mind the Gap! How come Israel had a woman prime minister and Italy not (yet!)? Is it better to live in a dictatorship or in a democracy? Voting Systems and Fairness: Two railway tracks: Parallel as in reality or converging as if seen in perspective? (not clear what it means). The Value of the Vote (not a question).

Group Projects 3 Start with your title/your question. Construct your project from the top down: divide your 20/25 pages into some four to six sections. Do not have lots of sub-sections. Start writing from the top, not from the bottom. You will soon fill the pages so do not worry about padding. You will be marked on quality not quantity. You will be marked on how well you answer the question. So the question of the title is crucial.

Group Projects 4 Seeing as the title is crucial, agree it with us as soon as possible. We are happy to discuss ideas. On Mattia’s list there are 19 projects with around 60 students. We suspect that this is not complete. Not that it matters but it would be nice to have a complete and correct list. Do tell Mattia if you are not on it.Mattia’s list Mattia If you have not started yet, you are almost certainly too late.

Group Projects 5 I have seen and commented on some 20 project proposals. I understand that the Professoressa has seen at least as many and perhaps also Mattia. We are constrained by fairness but are happy to make comments on the title, objective and structure. You can send us material by or make an appointment to see some of us.

Written Examination 1 There is a specimen paper on the site.specimen paper The actual paper will have a similar structure. There are two questions, one on “Hey’s part” of the course and the other on “Pasca’s part”; you have two hours and you have to answer both. You will note that they are very general. You will not be able to give a lot of detail and you will be marked on how well you structure your answer and put in perspective the various components of a complete answer.

Written Examination 2 Our advice: Spend one hour on each question. On each question spend the first 15 minutes planning your answer. Plan from the top. Divide the answer into stages/sections/steps in the argument. Be succinct and clear in your answer – you will get marked for quality, not quantity. Do NOT pad – we recognise that and get irritated!

Specimen paper question 1 “What positive contributions have economists made to the question of social choice?” Clarity – about what can be said by economists and what cannot. Obviously Arrow’s famous theorem – I think we can call this ‘negative result’ a positive contribution. All the material arising from Game Theory about what happens if people act alone. (Though we have to be careful who we call an economist.)

Specimen paper question 1: detail 0 A really good answer would start from that last point in parentheses: “Though we have to be careful who we call an economist.” What exactly is economics and what exactly is an economist? I personally am very hard-line about this but other people, for example Sen, are more relaxed. It might be good to start with a statement of your position on this.

Specimen paper question 1: detail 1 Clarity – about what can be said by economists and what cannot. The important role played by preferences and whether they are ordinal or cardinal. The distinction between efficiency (which economists can say something about) and fairness or equity or other social values.

Specimen paper question 1: detail 2 Arrow’s famous theorem Like all clever things the theorem looks obvious in hindsight, but it states clearly what assumptions lead to the impossibility. The theorem has led other economists (but see earlier) into relaxing/changing his assumptions to see if we can get aggregation. But some hard-line people think that people are different and we need politicians as a consequence.

Specimen paper question 1: detail 3 Game Theory. If one believes in Nash (and that he was an economist) one can argue that he has made clear that, in certain contexts, one needs a state, since individuals, acting alone, will end up in a position that none of them like. I think that this is very profound – if amazingly obvious. Once again we get clarity.

Specimen paper question 1: detail 4 A Final Comment. Questions do not have solely an objective answer, not even on the ‘economics’ part of this course (and less so on the other part). We will be looking for your opinion – and your marks will depend on how well you express your opinion, and not on whether we agree with it. So do say what you think – but argue the case.

Specimen paper question 2 part 1 “Which, in your opinion, is the country with the best constitution?” The first thing to say is that there is no such thing as a perfect constitution. Some constitutions are good in certain respects (for example, flexibility) and others are good in others (for example, rights to the workers). There are inevitably conflicts between different objectives that one wants to satisfy, for example, giving rights to one set of people almost certainly restricts the rights of other groups of people. There are two possible approaches to answering this question.

Specimen paper question 2 part 2 The first answer focuses on these key points: A good Constitution must stand firm on principles, be a real support for freedom, but knows how to adapt to the changing world and its challenges. A good Constitution through its text expresses a vision of society and a political project because the place of man in political society is defined. A bad Constitution is one that is internally contradictory or inconsistent. The Constitution: a rule creating institution for organizing the civilised (non-anarchic) state.

Specimen paper question 2 part 2 The first answer (continued) The material Constitution: a text to ensure the rights, duties and freedoms of the governed. Constitution: "a word that everyone knows; the most brilliant constitutionalist layman constantly hears about constitutional reform as respect for the Constitution. “ But what really is a constitution? A text, a standard, a set of standards?

Specimen paper question 2 part 3 The second answer focus on these key points: There is not (and cannot be) a country with the best Constitution Depend on advantages and disadvantages of the Constitution. Depend on which group the Constitution defended. Depend on which rights the Constitution defended. Depend on tradition, cultural and institutional heritage of witch country.

Finally We won’t wish you Good Luck in the assessment – since luck does not enter. But we do hope that you do well in the assessment and we do wish you Good Luck in your future life as we know that you will need it. But you will also need to be well-prepared and know how to use your brain. We hope that this course has helped you.