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Transitive Delegation in Social Networks: Theory and Experiment

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  • Sang-Hyun Kim

    (Yonsei University)

Abstract

This paper develops a model of delegative democracy in which each voter can either vote directly or delegate her vote, together with the votes delegated to her, to another voter and analyzes the incentive for delegation and its impact on the quality of collective decision. A key finding is that as long as the delegation network is sufficiently ideologically homogeneous and large, voters are willing to delegate their votes even if they know neither who knows what nor who knows whom. I also show that delegation facilitates a better collective decision. The laboratory data confirm the theoretical predictions.

Suggested Citation

  • Sang-Hyun Kim, 2021. "Transitive Delegation in Social Networks: Theory and Experiment," Working papers 2021rwp-192, Yonsei University, Yonsei Economics Research Institute.
  • Handle: RePEc:yon:wpaper:2021rwp-192
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    Keywords

    Voting; Delegation; Democracy; Delegative democracy; Information aggregation;
    All these keywords.

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