Fasil Alemante Publishes with Professors
Fasil Alemante conjectured and proved a theorem that is included in “Characterizing the Resolute Part of Monotonic Social Choice Correspondences”, forthcoming in Economic Theory. Mr. Alemante made his contribution as an economics major at William and Mary. Dr. Don Campbell and Dr. Jerry Kelly are the paper’s co-authors.
In the spring of 2012, five weeks before his final class at William and Mary, Mr. Alemante asked Dr. Campbell to suggest a research project. Fasil was not looking for something that would earn academic credit; he just wanted to experience the pleasure of research at a high level. Don gave him a conjecture that purported to generalize the following theorem that Dr. Kelly and Don had published a year previously [Campbell and Kelly (2011)]. In the case of two alternatives majority rule is characterized by Anonymity (symmetric treatment of individuals), Neutrality (symmetric treatment of alternatives), and Monotonicity (if the chosen alternative moves up in some individual’s preference ordering then the chosen alternative remains the same). Don thought the claim would generalize to any number of alternatives. With astonishing speed Fasil proved that the conjecture was false, which put them on the path to the correct result.
Mr. Alemante has completed his undergraduate work at William and Mary in Economics. He spent the next 3 years working in tech and founded a startup that incorporates 3D printing technology. He has returned to William and Mary to pursue a Masters of Science in Computational Operations Research. Don and Fasil will be working on more research on majority rule and other social choice functions next spring.
