IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eth/wpswif/07-70.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Minority Voting and Long-term Decisions

Author

Abstract

In this paper we propose minority voting as a scheme that can partially protect individuals from the risk of repeated exploitation. We consider a committee that meets twice to decide about projects where the first-period project may have a long-lasting impact. In the first period a simple open majority voting scheme takes place. Voting splits the committee into three groups: voting winners, voting losers, and absentees. Under minority voting only voting losers keep the voting right in the second period. We show that as soon as absolute risk aversion exceeds a threshold value minority voting is superior to repeated application of the simple majority rule.

Suggested Citation

  • Theresa Fahrenberger & Hans Gersbach, 2007. "Minority Voting and Long-term Decisions," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 07/70, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    • Handle: RePEc:eth:wpswif:07-70
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/mtec/cer-eth/cer-eth-dam/documents/working-papers/wp_07_70.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Riker, William H. & Brams, Steven J., 1973. "The Paradox of Vote Trading," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 67(4), pages 1235-1247, December.
    2. Alessandra Casella & Thomas Palfrey & Raymond Riezman, 2013. "Minorities and Storable Votes," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Raymond Riezman (ed.), International Trade Agreements and Political Economy, chapter 15, pages 247-282, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Alós-Ferrer, Carlos & Kuzmics, Christoph, 2013. "Hidden symmetries and focal points," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(1), pages 226-258.
    4. Gerber, Elisabeth R. & Morton, Rebecca B. & Rietz, Thomas A., 1998. "Minority Representation in Multimember Districts," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(1), pages 127-144, March.
    5. Helge Berger & Jakob de Haan & Robert Inklaar & Jakob de Haan, 2003. "Restructuring the ECB," CESifo Working Paper Series 1084, CESifo.
    6. Sugden, Robert, 1995. "A Theory of Focal Points," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 105(430), pages 533-550, May.
    7. Casella, Alessandra, 2005. "Storable votes," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 391-419, May.
    8. Rafael Hortala-Vallve, 2012. "Qualitative voting," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 24(4), pages 526-554, October.
    9. Casajus, Andre, 2000. "Focal Points in Framed Strategic Forms," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 263-291, August.
    10. Philipson, Tomas J & Snyder, James M, Jr, 1996. "Equilibrium and Efficiency in an Organized Vote Market," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 89(3-4), pages 245-265, December.
    11. Matthew O Jackson & Hugo F Sonnenschein, 2007. "Overcoming Incentive Constraints by Linking Decisions -super-1," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(1), pages 241-257, January.
    12. Crawford, Vincent P & Haller, Hans, 1990. "Learning How to Cooperate: Optimal Play in Repeated Coordination Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(3), pages 571-595, May.
    13. Maarten Janssen, 2001. "Rationalizing Focal Points," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 50(2), pages 119-148, March.
    14. Sawyer, Jack & MacRae, Duncan, 1962. "Game Theory and Cumulative Voting in Illinois: 1902–1954," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 56(4), pages 936-946, December.
    15. H. Peyton Young, 1996. "The Economics of Convention," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 105-122, Spring.
    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. Potrafke, Niklas, 2013. "Minority positions in the German Council of Economic Experts: A political economic analysis," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 180-187.
    2. Balistreri, Edward J. & Hillberry, Russell H. & Rutherford, Thomas F., 2011. "Structural estimation and solution of international trade models with heterogeneous firms," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 95-108, March.
    3. Gersbach, Hans & Tejada, Oriol, 2020. "Semi-flexible Majority Rules for Public Good Provision," CEPR Discussion Papers 15099, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Theresa Fahrenberger, 2009. "Short-term Deviations from Simple Majority Voting," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 09/115, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    5. Gersbach, Hans, 2009. "Minority voting and public project provision," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-40.
    6. Fahrenberger, Theresa C. & Gersbach, Hans, 2012. "Preferences for harmony and minority voting," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 1-13.
    7. Gersbach, Hans & Wickramage, Kamali, 2021. "Balanced voting," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 203-229.
    8. Aleksei Y. Kondratev & Alexander S. Nesterov, 2020. "Measuring majority power and veto power of voting rules," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 183(1), pages 187-210, April.
    9. Gersbach, Hans, 2017. "Flexible Majority Rules in democracyville: A guided tour," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 37-43.
    10. 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. Gersbach, Hans & Wickramage, Kamali, 2021. "Balanced voting," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 203-229.
    2. Casella, Alessandra & Turban, Sébastien, 2014. "Democracy undone. Systematic minority advantage in competitive vote markets," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 47-70.
    3. Casella, Alessandra, 2005. "Storable votes," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 391-419, May.
    4. Casella Alessandra & Ehrenberg Shuky & Gelman Andrew & Shen Jie, 2010. "Protecting Minorities in Large Binary Elections: A Test of Storable Votes Using Field Data," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-35, October.
    5. Casella, Alessandra & Gelman, Andrew, 2008. "A simple scheme to improve the efficiency of referenda," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(10-11), pages 2240-2261, October.
    6. Alessandro Sontuoso & Sudeep Bhatia, 2021. "A notion of prominence for games with natural‐language labels," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(1), pages 283-312, January.
    7. Gersbach, Hans, 2009. "Minority voting and public project provision," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-40.
    8. Alessandra Casella, 2008. "Storable Votes and Agenda Order Control. Theory and Experiments," NBER Working Papers 14487, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Casella, Alessandra, 2011. "Agenda control as a cheap talk game: Theory and experiments with Storable Votes," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 46-76, May.
    10. Drexl, Moritz & Kleiner, Andreas, 2013. "Preference Intensities in Repeated Collective Decision-Making," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79832, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    11. Bosch-Domènech, Antoni & Vriend, Nicolaas J., 2013. "On the role of non-equilibrium focal points as coordination devices," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 52-67.
    12. Urs Fischbacher & Simeon Schudy, 2014. "Reciprocity and resistance to comprehensive reform," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 160(3), pages 411-428, September.
    13. Pintér, Ágnes & Veszteg, Róbert F., 2010. "Minority vs. majority: An experimental study of standardized bids," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 36-50, March.
    14. Alós-Ferrer, Carlos & Kuzmics, Christoph, 2013. "Hidden symmetries and focal points," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(1), pages 226-258.
    15. Theresa Fahrenberger, 2009. "Short-term Deviations from Simple Majority Voting," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 09/115, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    16. Külpmann, Philipp & Khantadze, Davit, 2016. "Identifying the reasons for coordination failure in a laboratory experiment," Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers 567, Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University.
    17. Casella, Alessandra & Gelman, Andrew & Palfrey, Thomas R., 2006. "An experimental study of storable votes," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 123-154, October.
    18. Kim, Semin, 2017. "Ordinal versus cardinal voting rules: A mechanism design approach," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 350-371.
    19. 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.
    20. Daskalova, Vessela & Vriend, Nicolaas J., 2021. "Learning frames," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 78-96.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    voting; minority; durable decision; risk aversion; tyranny of majority rules;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making

    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:eth:wpswif:07-70. 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://edirc.repec.org/data/iwethch.html .

    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.