Free Triples, Large Indifference Classes and the Majority Rule

Salvador Barberà () and Lars Ehlers

UFAE and IAE Working Papers from Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC)

Abstract: We present a new domain of preferences under which the majority relation is always quasi-transitive and thus Condorcet winners always exist. We model situations where a set of individuals must choose one individual in the group. Agents are connected through some relationship that can be interpreted as expressing neighborhood, and which is formalized by a graph. Our restriction on preferences is as follows: each agent can freely rank his immediate neighbors, but then he is indifferent between each neighbor and all other agents that this neighbor "leads to". Hence, agents can be highly perceptive regarding their neighbors, while being insensitive to the differences between these and other agents which are further removed from them. We show quasi-transitivity of the majority relation when the graph expressing the neighborhood relation is a tree. We also discuss a further restriction allowing to extend the result for more general graphs. Finally, we compare the proposed restriction with others in the literature, to conclude that it is independent of any previously discussed domain restriction.

Keywords: Voting; Tree; Majority Rule (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C71 D71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15
Date: 2002-05-15
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://pareto.uab.es/wp/2002/51202.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Free triples, large indifference classes and the majority rule (2011)
Working Paper: Free Triples, Large Indifference Classes and the Majority Rule (2007)
Working Paper: Free Triples, Large Indifference Classes and the Majority Rule (2007)
Working Paper: Free Triples, Large Indifference Classes and the Majority Rule (2007)
Working Paper: Free Triples, Large Indifference Classes and the Majority Rule (2003)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aub:autbar:512.02

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in UFAE and IAE Working Papers from Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Xavier Vila ().