ABSTRACT
Several illustrations of the four cases defined above can be given. Criteria such as that of majority or unanimity can aggregate preferences with a rule. Merton’s self-fulfilling prophecy is an aggregation effect which comes from ‘coincidence’ of preferences: anyone who draws out their money because they fear a bank failure contributes in effect to the bank’s bankruptcy. Individual actions can themselves be aggregated by rules, any organization is by definition made up of a set of rules which is supposed to generate some desirable effects, i.e., creating some product in the best possible conditions. But aggregation effects can also happen outside of rules and result in the actors, for instance belonging to a certain category, being all exposed to a similar modification of their environment: thus, too rigorous a limitation of redundancy regulations may encourage managers to take on fewer workers and consequently increase the number of jobless. A ‘collective’ effect has been produced by the aggregation of uncoordinated actions which goes against the desired objective of protecting jobs.
