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Minorities and Storable Votes

Author

Listed:
  • Alessandra Casella

    (Department of Economics, Columbia University)

  • Thomas Palfrey

    (Division of Humanities, Cal Tech)

  • Raymond Riezman

    (Department of Economics, University of Iowa)

Abstract

The paper studies a simple voting system that has the potential to increase the power of minorities without sacrificing aggregate efficiency. Storable votes grant each voter a stock of votes to spend as desired over a series of binary decisions. By accumulating votes on issues that it deems most important, the minority can win occasionally. But because the majority typically can outvote it, the minority wins only if its strength of preference is high and the majority's strength of preference is low. The result is that with storable votes, aggregate efficiency either falls little or in fact rises. The theoretical predictions of our model are confirmed by a series of experiments: the frequency of minority victories, the relative payoff of the minority versus the majority, and the aggregate payoffs all match the theory.

Suggested Citation

  • Alessandra Casella & Thomas Palfrey & Raymond Riezman, 2005. "Minorities and Storable Votes," Economics Working Papers 0059, Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science.
  • Handle: RePEc:ads:wpaper:0059
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Casella, Alessandra, 2005. "Storable votes," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 391-419, May.
    4. Rafael Hortala-Vallve, 2012. "Qualitative voting," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 24(4), pages 526-554, October.
    5. McLennan, Andrew, 1998. "Consequences of the Condorcet Jury Theorem for Beneficial Information Aggregation by Rational Agents," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(2), pages 413-418, June.
    6. Paul Milgrom & Robert Weber, 1981. "Distributional Strategies for Games with Incomplete Information," Discussion Papers 428R, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
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    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State
    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations

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