[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucy/cypeua/04-2018.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Implementation by vote-buying mechanisms

Author

Listed:
  • Jon X. Eguia
  • Dimitrios Xefteris
Abstract
A vote-buying mechanism is such that each agent buys a quantity of votes x to cast for an alternative of her choosing, at a cost c(x), and the outcome is determined by the total number of votes cast for each alternative. In the context of binary decisions, we prove that the choice rules that can be implemented by vote-buying mechanisms in large societies are parameterized by a positive parameter rho, which measures the importance of individual preference intensities on the social choice: The limit with rho= 0 is majority rule, rho = 1 is utilitarianism, and rho?8 is the Rawlsian maximin rule. We show that any vote-buying mechanism with limit cost elasticity (1 rho)/rho as x?0 implements the choice rule defined by rho. The utilitarian efficiency of quadratic voting (Lalley and Weyl, 2016) follows as a special case.

Suggested Citation

  • Jon X. Eguia & Dimitrios Xefteris, 2018. "Implementation by vote-buying mechanisms," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 04-2018, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucy:cypeua:04-2018
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.econ.ucy.ac.cy/RePEc/papers/04-18.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Groves, Theodore & Ledyard, John O, 1977. "Optimal Allocation of Public Goods: A Solution to the "Free Rider" Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(4), pages 783-809, May.
    2. Kevin W. S. Roberts, 1980. "Interpersonal Comparability and Social Choice Theory," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(2), pages 421-439.
    3. Green, Jerry & Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1977. "Characterization of Satisfactory Mechanisms for the Revelation of Preferences for Public Goods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(2), pages 427-438, March.
    4. Carbajal, Juan Carlos & McLennan, Andrew & Tourky, Rabee, 2013. "Truthful implementation and preference aggregation in restricted domains," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(3), pages 1074-1101.
    5. Alessandra Casella & Aniol Llorente-Saguer & Thomas R. Palfrey, 2012. "Competitive Equilibrium in Markets for Votes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(4), pages 593-658.
    6. Eric Maskin, 1999. "Nash Equilibrium and Welfare Optimality," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 23-38.
    7. Vijay Krishna & John Morgan, 2011. "Overcoming Ideological Bias in Elections," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(2), pages 183-211.
    8. Dixit, Avinash & Grossman, Gene M & Helpman, Elhanan, 1997. "Common Agency and Coordination: General Theory and Application to Government Policy Making," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(4), pages 752-769, August.
    9. Matsushima, Hitoshi, 2008. "Detail-free mechanism design in twice iterative dominance: Large economies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 141(1), pages 134-151, July.
    10. Laurent Bouton & Micael Castanheira & Allan Drazen, 2024. "A Theory of Small Campaign Contributions," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(662), pages 2351-2390.
    11. Campante, Filipe R. & Ferreira, Francisco H.G., 2007. "Inefficient lobbying, populism and oligarchy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(5-6), pages 993-1021, June.
    12. Matthew O. Jackson, 1992. "Implementation in Undominated Strategies: A Look at Bounded Mechanisms," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 59(4), pages 757-775.
    13. Krasa, Stefan & Polborn, Mattias K., 2009. "Is mandatory voting better than voluntary voting?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 275-291, May.
    14. Joan Esteban & Debraj Ray, 2011. "A Model Of Ethnic Conflict," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 496-521, June.
    15. Tilman Börgers & Jiangtao Li, 2019. "Strategically Simple Mechanisms," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 87(6), pages 2003-2035, November.
    16. Edward Clarke, 1971. "Multipart pricing of public goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 17-33, September.
    17. Kazumura, Tomoya & Mishra, Debasis & Serizawa, Shigehiro, 2020. "Mechanism design without quasilinearity," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(2), May.
    18. Goeree, Jacob K. & Zhang, Jingjing, 2017. "One man, one bid," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 151-171.
    19. Philip J. Reny, 2011. "On the Existence of Monotone Pure‐Strategy Equilibria in Bayesian Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(2), pages 499-553, March.
    20. Schmitz, Patrick W. & Tröger, Thomas, 2012. "The (sub-)optimality of the majority rule," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 651-665.
    21. Paul R. Milgrom & Robert J. Weber, 1985. "Distributional Strategies for Games with Incomplete Information," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 10(4), pages 619-632, November.
    22. Groves, Theodore & Loeb, Martin, 1975. "Incentives and public inputs," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 211-226, August.
    23. William Vickrey, 1961. "Counterspeculation, Auctions, And Competitive Sealed Tenders," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 16(1), pages 8-37, March.
    24. David Yermack, 2017. "Corporate Governance and Blockchains," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 21(1), pages 7-31.
    25. Elaine Bennett & David Conn, 1977. "The group incentive properties of mechanisms for the provision of public goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 95-102, March.
    26. Ledyard, John O. & Palfrey, Thomas R., 2002. "The approximation of efficient public good mechanisms by simple voting schemes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 153-171, February.
    27. John W. Patty & Elizabeth Maggie Penn, 2017. "Uncertainty, polarization, and proposal incentives under quadratic voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 172(1), pages 109-124, July.
    28. Louis Kaplow & Scott Duke Kominers, 2017. "Who will vote quadratically? Voter turnout and votes cast under quadratic voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 172(1), pages 125-149, July.
    29. David Stromberg, 2008. "How the Electoral College Influences Campaigns and Policy: The Probability of Being Florida," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 769-807, June.
    30. Abram Burk, 1936. "Real Income, Expenditure Proportionality, and Frisch's "New Methods of Measuring Marginal Utility"," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 4(1), pages 33-52.
    31. Herve Moulin, 2004. "Fair Division and Collective Welfare," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262633116, April.
    32. Loukas Karabarbounis, 2011. "One Dollar, One Vote," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(553), pages 621-651, June.
    33. Thierry Marchant & Debasis Mishra, 2015. "Mechanism design with two alternatives in quasi-linear environments," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(2), pages 433-455, February.
    34. Vijay Krishna & John Morgan, 2015. "Majority Rule and Utilitarian Welfare," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(4), pages 339-375, November.
    35. Jerry Green & Jean-Jacques Laffont, 1977. "Imperfect personal information and the demand revealing process: A sampling approach," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 79-94, March.
    36. Joan Esteban & Debraj Ray, 2006. "Inequality, Lobbying, and Resource Allocation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 257-279, March.
    37. Philip J. Reny, 1999. "On the Existence of Pure and Mixed Strategy Nash Equilibria in Discontinuous Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(5), pages 1029-1056, September.
    38. Jerry Green & Jean-Jacques Laffont, 1979. "On Coalition Incentive Compatibility," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 46(2), pages 243-254.
    39. Eddie Dekel & Matthew O. Jackson & Asher Wolinsky, 2008. "Vote Buying: General Elections," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(2), pages 351-380, April.
    40. Gabriel Carroll, 2019. "Robustness in Mechanism Design and Contracting," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 11(1), pages 139-166, August.
    41. Green, Jerry & Kohlberg, Elon & Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1976. "Partial equilibrium approach to the free-rider problem," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 375-394, November.
    42. Esteban, Joan & Ray, Debraj, 1999. "Conflict and Distribution," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 379-415, August.
    43. Efe A. Ok, 2007. "Preliminaries of Real Analysis, from Real Analysis with Economic Applications," Introductory Chapters, in: Real Analysis with Economic Applications, Princeton University Press.
    44. Felix J. Bierbrauer & Martin F. Hellwig, 2016. "Robustly Coalition-Proof Incentive Mechanisms for Public Good Provision are Voting Mechanisms and Vice Versa," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 83(4), pages 1440-1464.
    45. Karam Kang, 2016. "Policy Influence and Private Returns from Lobbying in the Energy Sector," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 83(1), pages 269-305.
    46. Safronov, Mikhail, 2018. "Coalition-proof full efficient implementation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 659-677.
    47. Abram Burk, 1938. "A Reformulation of Certain Aspects of Welfare Economics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 52(2), pages 310-334.
    48. Steven P. Lalley & E. Glen Weyl, 2018. "Quadratic Voting: How Mechanism Design Can Radicalize Democracy," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 108, pages 33-37, May.
    49. Groves, Theodore, 1973. "Incentives in Teams," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(4), pages 617-631, July.
    50. Bergemann & Morris, . "An Introduction to Robust Mechanism Design," Foundations and Trends(R) in Microeconomics, now publishers, vol. 8(3), pages 169-230.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anand Murugesan & Jean-Robert Tyran, 2023. "The Puzzling Practice of Paying “Cash for Votes”," CESifo Working Paper Series 10504, CESifo.
    2. Alessandra Casella & Antonin Macé, 2021. "Does Vote Trading Improve Welfare?," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 13(1), pages 57-86, August.
    3. Nikolas Tsakas & Dimitrios Xefteris & Nicholas Ziros, 2021. "Vote Trading in Power-Sharing Systems: A Laboratory Investigation," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(636), pages 1849-1882.
    4. Christian Ewerhart, 2022. "Diagonal payoff security and equilibrium existence in quasi-symmetric discontinuous games," ECON - Working Papers 414, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Aug 2022.
    5. Vitalik Buterin & Zoë Hitzig & E. Glen Weyl, 2019. "A Flexible Design for Funding Public Goods," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(11), pages 5171-5187, November.
    6. Moreno-Cruz, Juan & Harding, Anthony, 2023. "A Unifying Theory of Foreign Intervention in Domestic Climate Policy," RFF Working Paper Series 23-24, Resources for the Future.
    7. Vragov, Roumen & Smith, Vernon, 2023. "A method for identifying parameterizations of the Compensation election and Quadratic voting that admit pure-strategy equilibria," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 7-16.
    8. Hans Gersbach, 2022. "New Forms of Democracy," CESifo Working Paper Series 10134, CESifo.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. JOHN McMILLAN, 1979. "The Free‐Rider Problem: A Survey," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 55(2), pages 95-107, June.
    2. Maskin, Eric & Sjostrom, Tomas, 2002. "Implementation theory," Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare,in: K. J. Arrow & A. K. Sen & K. Suzumura (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 5, pages 237-288 Elsevier.
    3. Charles Laine, 1985. "Distribution of jointly owned private goods by the demand-revealing process: Applications to divorce settlements and estate administration," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 437-457, January.
    4. Monique Florenzano, 2009. "From equilibrium models to mechanism design: On the place and the role of government in the public goods provision analysis in the second part of the twentieth century," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00367859, HAL.
    5. Manimay Sengupta, 1996. "Informed Planner, Decentralized Decisions And Incentive Compatibility," Discussion Paper Series 12, School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University, revised Oct 1996.
    6. Jing Chen & Silvio Micali, 2016. "Leveraging Possibilistic Beliefs in Unrestricted Combinatorial Auctions," Games, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-19, October.
    7. Vitalik Buterin & Zoë Hitzig & E. Glen Weyl, 2019. "A Flexible Design for Funding Public Goods," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(11), pages 5171-5187, November.
    8. Kazuhiko Hashimoto & Kohei Shiozawa, 2016. "Strategy-Proof Probabilistic Mechanisms for Public Decision with Money," ISER Discussion Paper 0964, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    9. Shao, Ran & Zhou, Lin, 2016. "Voting and optimal provision of a public good," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 35-41.
    10. Goeree, Jacob K. & Zhang, Jingjing, 2017. "One man, one bid," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 151-171.
    11. Chakravarty, Surajeet & Kaplan, Todd R. & Myles, Gareth, 2018. "When costly voting is beneficial," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 33-42.
    12. Clark Robinson & Gerry Suchanek, 1985. "On the design of optimal mechanisms for the Arrow-Hahn-McKenzie economy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 313-335, January.
    13. Kazuhiko Hashimoto & Hiroki Saitoh, 2010. "Domain expansion of the pivotal mechanism," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 34(3), pages 455-470, March.
    14. Hans Peter Grüner & Thomas Tröger, 2019. "Linear Voting Rules," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 87(6), pages 2037-2077, November.
    15. Ledyard, John O., "undated". "Public Goods: A Survey of Experimental Research," Working Papers 861, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
    16. Alessandra Casella & Antonin Macé, 2021. "Does Vote Trading Improve Welfare?," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 13(1), pages 57-86, August.
    17. Theodore Groves & John Ledyard, 1977. "Some limitations of demand revelaing processes," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 107-124, March.
    18. Feldmann, Martin & Müller, Stephanie, 2003. "An incentive scheme for true information providing in Supply Chains," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 63-73, April.
    19. Emmanuelle Auriol & Robert Gary-Bobo, 2012. "On the optimal number of representatives," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 153(3), pages 419-445, December.
    20. Steven Johnson, 1984. "Demand-revealing processes and accounting standard-setting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 42(1), pages 3-24, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    implementation; mechanism design; vote-buying; social welfare; utilitarianism; quadratic voting;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucy:cypeua:04-2018. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.ucy.ac.cy/econ/?lang=en .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.