Books

First edition, first printing. 8vo. x, [2], 99, [1] pp. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt, gilt publisher's device to front board, dust jacket (neat ownership inscription of 'A.D. Knox' to front free endpaper and title page, otherwise internally clean; jacket unevenly toned, minor loss to head of spine panel, a few tiny nicks and short closed tears to extremities, notwithstanding a very good copy indeed, better than usually encountered). New York, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Cowles Commission for Research in Economics, Monograph No. 12. A very presentable copy of Arrow's brilliant doctoral thesis, an unusually difficult book to find in any kind of collectible condition. The work 'created the field of social choice theory, a fundamental construct in theoretical welfare economics and theoretical political science' (New Palgrave). 'Employing the notational system of symbolic logic, at the time unfamiliar to economists, Arrow proposed to solve a question in politics which no economist and few political scientists had ever posed: suppose all individuals can rank all states of the world in order of preference, is it possible to find a voting rule that will always select one of those states as most preferred?' (Blaug, Great Economists Since Keynes). Arrow was awarded the 1972 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, becoming the youngest recipient at the age of 51.