Andranik Semovich Tangian (Melik-Tangyan) (Russian: Андраник Семович Тангян (Мелик-Тангян)); born March 29, 1952) is a Soviet Armenian-German mathematician, political economist and music theorist. Tangian is known for the mathematical theory of democracy, the Third Vote election method, criticism of flexicurity employment strategy and models of artificial perception of music. He is professor of the Institute for Economics (ECON) of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.
Biography
Andranik Tangian was born in Moscow, Soviet Union, on March 29, 1952. After the graduation from the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of the Moscow State University in 1974, he has worked at the Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas and the Central Economic Mathematical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, where he got his PhD in mathematics in 1979.
From 1980 to 1983 he worked as assistant professor at the Academy of National Economy under the Government of the Russian Federation and since 1983 as senior researcher at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, where he received habilitation in mathematics in 1989.
As a self-taught composer, he debuted with orchestral music to the play The Last Trimester at the Moscow in 1977 and then has attended the class of Edison Denisov at the Moscow State Conservatory for two years. At the Computing Centre of the Academy of Sciences, Tangian organized the first Soviet computer music seminar and has cooperated with the Union of Soviet Composers.
On the invitation of Professor , Tangian spent the academic year 1990/91 at the University of Hagen and published his first monograph on the mathematical theory of democracy. During the next two academic years, Tangian has been visiting professor/researcher at the computer music studio ACROE–LIFIA of the Grenoble Institute of Technology, where he has written a monograph on artificial perception and music. In parallel, he has taught calculus and probability at the department of mathematical methods in economics of the University of Paris I (Sorbonne).
From 1993 to 2002 Tangian was in charge of a project of the German Research Foundation (DFG) on constructing objective functions for econometric decision models at the University of Hagen, where he received the German habilitation in mathematical economics and became Privatdozent in 1988.
From 2003 to 2017 Tangian worked at the of the Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, Düsseldorf, where he became the head of unit () "Policy modeling", having developed models to analyze the European flexicurity employment policy, which are summarized in the book Flexicurity and political philosophy. At the same time, he has created the course "Decision making in politics and economics" at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. There, Tangian received his habilitation in general economics in 2008 and professor title in 2009. Basing on this course, Tangian has published two monographs on the mathematical theory of democracy.
Works
Mathematical theory of democracy
Combining the social choice and public choice approaches, Tangian's theory mathematically studies the fundamental concept to modern democracies – that of political representation. For this purpose, several indices of representativeness are introduced and used for both theoretical analysis and applications.
Third Vote election method
The method developed within the framework of the Mathematical theory of democracy assumes that instead of casting votes for candidates by name, electors give Yes/No-answers to political questions as raised in the candidates' manifestos. The balance of public opinion on these issues thus identified is then used to find the most representative candidates and form the most representative parliament.
Decision theory
For decision models, Tangian has developed several methods for constructing objective functions (= composite indices that embody decision-makers' preferences). In particular, they are applied to optimize budgets for 16 Westphalian universities and the European subsidies to 271 German regions for equalizing unemployment rates.
Flexicurity
Tangian's ten empirical models of flexicurity — the European policy intended to compensate the flexibilization of employment by social security measures — show that it fails to meet expectations. Alternatively, the job quality indicators developed within this research are proposed for the workplace tax that, by analogy with the green tax, should charge employers for bad working conditions considered "social pollution".