Franz Dietrich (Group on Philosophy, Probability and Modelling, University of Konstanz, Germany) Christian List () (Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK)
Additional information is available for the following
registered author(s):
In the classical Condorcet jury model, different jurors' votes are independent random variables, where each juror has the same probability p>1/2 of voting for the correct alternative. The probability that the correct alternative will win under majority voting converges to 1 as the number of jurors increases. Hence the probability of an incorrect majority vote can be made arbitrarily small, a result that may seem unrealistic. A more realistic model is obtained by relaxing the assumption of independence and relating the vote of every juror to the same "body of evidence". In terms of Bayesian trees, the votes are direct descendants not of the true state of the world ('guilty' or 'not guilty'), but of the "body of evidence", which in turn is a direct descendant of the true state of the world. This permits the possibility of a misleading body of evidence. Our main theorem shows that the probability that the correct alternative will win under majority voting converges to the probability that the body of evidence is not misleading, which may be strictly less than 1.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford in its series Economics Papers with number
2002-W23.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)