The (sub-)optimality of the majority rule

Patrick Schmitz and Thomas Tröger
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Thomas Troeger

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We consider collective choice from two alternatives. Ex ante, each agent is uncertain about which alternative she prefers, and may be uncertain about the intensity of her preferences. An environment is given by a probability distribution over utility vectors that is symmetric across agents and neutral across alternatives. In many environments, the majority voting rule maximizes agents' ex-ante expected utilities among all anonymous and dominant-strategy implementable choice rules. But in some environments where the agents' utilities are stochastically correlated, other dominant-strategy choice rules are better for all agents. If utilities are stochastically independent across agents, majority voting is ex-ante optimal among all anonymous and incentive-compatible rules. We also compare rules from an interim viewpoint.

Keywords: majority; rule (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-gth, nep-mic and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/32716/1/MPRA_paper_32716.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The (sub-)optimality of the majority rule (2012)
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:pra:mprapa:32716

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().