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The Paradox of New Members: Strategic Foundations and Experimental Evidence

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  • Michalis Drouvelis

    (School of Economics, University of Nottingham)

  • Maria Montero

    () (School of Economics, University of Nottingham)

  • Martin Sefton

    (School of Economics, University of Nottingham)

Abstract

Power indices suggest that adding new members to a voting body may affect the balance of power between the original members even if their number of votes and the decision rule remain constant. Some of the original members may actually gain, a phenomenon known as the paradox of new members. We show that the paradox can occur as an equilibrium of a noncooperative bargaining game based on the Baron-Ferejohn (1989) model of legislative bargaining. We implement this game in the laboratory and find empirical support for the paradox.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham in its series Discussion Papers with number 2007-13.

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Date of creation: Dec 2007
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Handle: RePEc:not:notcdx:2007-13

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Postal: School of Economics University of Nottingham University Park Nottingham NG7 2RD
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Fax: (0115) 951 4159
Web page: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/economics/cedex/
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Keywords: voting; non-cooperative bargaining; power indices; experiments; paradox of new members;

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Cited by:
  1. John Kagel & Hankyoung Sung & Eyal Winter, 2010. "Veto power in committees: an experimental study," Experimental Economics, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 167-188, June.
  2. Guillaume Fréchette & John Kagel & Massimo Morelli, 2012. "Pork versus public goods: an experimental study of public good provision within a legislative bargaining framework," Economic Theory, Springer, vol. 49(3), pages 779-800, April.
  3. Drouvelis, Michalis & Montero, Maria & Sefton, Martin, 2010. "Gaining power through enlargement: Strategic foundations and experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 274-292, July.
  4. Eric Guerci & Nobuyuki Hanaki & Naoki Watanabe & Gabriele Esposito & Xiaoyan Lu, 2011. "A Note on a Weighted Voting Experiment: Human Mistakes in Cooperative Games," Working Papers halshs-00645867, HAL.

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