IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tor/tecipa/mturner-98-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Meetings with costly participation

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Osborne
  • Jeffry Rosenthal
  • Matthew A. Turner

Abstract

We study a collective decision-making process in which people who are interested in an issue are invited to attend a meeting, and the policy chosen is a compromise among the preferences of those who show up. We show that in an equilibrium the number of attendees is small and their positions are extreme; in a wide range of circumstances the outcome is random. These characteristics of an equilibrium are consistent with evidence on the outcome of hearings on US regulatory policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Osborne & Jeffry Rosenthal & Matthew A. Turner, 1998. "Meetings with costly participation," Working Papers mturner-98-02, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:tor:tecipa:mturner-98-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.economics.utoronto.ca/public/workingPapers/UT-ECIPA-MTURNER-98-02.ps
    File Function: MainText
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Palfrey, Thomas R. & Rosenthal, Howard, 1984. "Participation and the provision of discrete public goods: a strategic analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 171-193, July.
    2. Michael R. Baye & Dan Kovenock & Casper G. Vries, 2008. "Rigging the lobbying process: An application of the all-pay auction," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Kai A. Konrad & Arye L. Hillman (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 2, pages 331-336, Springer.
    3. Dixit, Avinash & Olson, Mancur, 2000. "Does voluntary participation undermine the Coase Theorem?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 309-335, June.
    4. Becker, Gary S., 1985. "Public policies, pressure groups, and dead weight costs," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 329-347, December.
    5. Palfrey, Thomas R. & Rosenthal, Howard, 1985. "Voter Participation and Strategic Uncertainty," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 79(1), pages 62-78, March.
    6. Tirole, Jean, 1986. "Procurement and Renegotiation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(2), pages 235-259, April.
    7. Thomas Palfrey & Howard Rosenthal, 1983. "A strategic calculus of voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 7-53, January.
    8. Winter, Eyal, 1997. "Negotiations in multi-issue committees," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 323-342, September.
    9. Gary S. Becker, 1983. "A Theory of Competition Among Pressure Groups for Political Influence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(3), pages 371-400.
    10. Bulkley, George & Myles, Gareth D & Pearson, Bernard R, 2001. "On the Membership of Decision-Making Committees," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 106(1-2), pages 1-22, January.
    11. Lohmann, Susanne, 1993. "A Signaling Model of Informative and Manipulative Political Action," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(2), pages 319-333, June.
    12. Feddersen, Timothy J & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 1996. "The Swing Voter's Curse," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 408-424, June.
    13. Jean-Jacques Laffont & Jean Tirole, 1993. "A Theory of Incentives in Procurement and Regulation," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262121743, December.
    14. Zwiebel, Jeffrey, 1995. "Corporate Conservatism and Relative Compensation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(1), pages 1-25, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Chakravarty, Surajeet & Kaplan, Todd R. & Myles, Gareth, 2018. "When costly voting is beneficial," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 33-42.
    2. Makris, Miltiadis, 2009. "Private provision of discrete public goods," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 292-299, September.
    3. Bhattacharya, Sourav & Duffy, John & Kim, Sun-Tak, 2014. "Compulsory versus voluntary voting: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 111-131.
    4. Alastair Smith & Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Tom LaGatta, 2017. "Group incentives and rational voting1," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 29(2), pages 299-326, April.
    5. Antonio Merlo, 2005. "Whither Political Economy? Theories, Facts and Issues," PIER Working Paper Archive 05-033, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 01 Dec 2005.
    6. Tasos Kalandrakis, 2007. "On participation games with complete information," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 35(3), pages 337-352, February.
    7. João Amaro de Matos & Pedro Barros, 2004. "Social Norms and the Paradox of Elections’ Turnout," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 121(1), pages 239-255, October.
    8. Antonio Merlo & Thomas R. Palfrey, 2018. "External validation of voter turnout models by concealed parameter recovery," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 176(1), pages 297-314, July.
    9. Mehrdad Vahabi, 2011. "Appropriation, violent enforcement, and transaction costs: a critical survey," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 147(1), pages 227-253, April.
    10. John Duffy & Sourav Bhattacharya & Sun-Tak Kim, 2012. "Compulsory versus Voluntary Voting: An Experimental Study," Working Paper 492, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Aug 2013.
    11. Richard Ball, 1995. "Interest Groups, Influence And Welfare," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 119-146, July.
    12. Jorge Peña & Georg Nöldeke, 2023. "Cooperative Dilemmas with Binary Actions and Multiple Players," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 1156-1193, December.
    13. Josh Lerner, 2002. "When Bureaucrats Meet Entrepreneurs: The Design of Effective "Public Venture Capital" Programmes," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(477), pages 73-84, February.
    14. Hans Peter Grüner & Thomas Tröger, 2019. "Linear Voting Rules," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 87(6), pages 2037-2077, November.
    15. Rodrigo M. S. Moita & Claudio Paiva, 2013. "Political Price Cycles in Regulated Industries: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 94-121, February.
    16. Felix Oberholzer-Gee & Joel Waldfogel, 2001. "Electoral Acceleration: The Effect of Minority Population on Minority Voter Turnout," NBER Working Papers 8252, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Ming Li & Dipjyoti Majumdar, 2010. "A Psychologically Based Model of Voter Turnout," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 12(5), pages 979-1002, October.
    18. Cameron Guage & Feng Fu, 2021. "Asymmetric Partisan Voter Turnout Games," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 738-758, December.
    19. Vahabi,Mehrdad, 2019. "The Political Economy of Predation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107591370, January.
    20. Abdul Noury, 2004. "Abstention in Daylight: Strategic Calculus of Voting in the European Parliament," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 121(1), pages 179-211, October.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    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:tor:tecipa:mturner-98-02. 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: RePEc Maintainer (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.