IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/21372.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Benefits of Costly Voting

Author

Listed:
  • Chakravarty, Surajeet
  • Kaplan, Todd R
  • Myles, Gareth

Abstract

We present a costly voting model in which each voter has a private valuation for their preferred outcome of a vote. When there is a zero cost to voting, all voters vote and hence all values are counted equally regardless of how high they may be. By having a cost to voting, only those with high enough values would choose to incur this cost. Hence, the outcome will be determined by voters with higher valuations. We show that in such a case welfare may be enhanced. Such an effect occurs when there is both a large enough density of voters with low values and a high enough expected value.

Suggested Citation

  • Chakravarty, Surajeet & Kaplan, Todd R & Myles, Gareth, 2010. "The Benefits of Costly Voting," MPRA Paper 21372, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:21372
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/21372/1/MPRA_paper_21372.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/58939/11/MPRA_paper_58939.pdf
    File Function: revised version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Heckman, James J & Honore, Bo E, 1990. "The Empirical Content of the Roy Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(5), pages 1121-1149, September.
    2. Amy King & Andrew Leigh, 2009. "Are Ballot Order Effects Heterogeneous?," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 90(1), pages 71-87, March.
    3. Krasa, Stefan & Polborn, Mattias K., 2009. "Is mandatory voting better than voluntary voting?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 275-291, May.
    4. Amrita Dhillon & Susana Peralta, 2002. "Economic Theories Of Voter Turnout," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(480), pages 332-352, June.
    5. Tilman Borgers, 2004. "Costly Voting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 57-66, March.
    6. 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.
    7. Mark Bagnoli & Ted Bergstrom, 2006. "Log-concave probability and its applications," Studies in Economic Theory, in: Charalambos D. Aliprantis & Rosa L. Matzkin & Daniel L. McFadden & James C. Moore & Nicholas C. Yann (ed.), Rationality and Equilibrium, pages 217-241, Springer.
    8. Sayantan Ghosal & Ben Lockwood, 2009. "Costly voting when both information and preferences differ: is turnout too high or too low?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 33(1), pages 25-50, June.
    9. Nicola Persico, 2004. "Committee Design with Endogenous Information," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(1), pages 165-191.
    10. Brams, Steven J. & Fishburn, Peter C., 1978. "Approval Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 72(3), pages 831-847, September.
    11. Jeffrey S. Rosenthal & Martin J. Osborne & Matthew A. Turner, 2000. "Meetings with Costly Participation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 927-943, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dmitriy Vorobyev, 2016. "Participation in fraudulent elections," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 46(4), pages 863-892, April.
    2. Chakravarty Surajeet & Kaplan Todd R, 2010. "Vote or Shout," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-14, September.
    3. McAfee, R. Preston & Miller, Alan D., 2012. "The tradeoff of the commons," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(3), pages 349-353.
    4. Hans Peter Grüner & Thomas Tröger, 2019. "Linear Voting Rules," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 87(6), pages 2037-2077, November.

    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. Lo Prete, Anna & Revelli, Federico, 2014. "Voter Turnout and City Performance," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201435, University of Turin.
    3. Revelli, Federico, 2013. "Tax Limits and Local Democracy," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201336, University of Turin.
    4. Krishna, Vijay & Morgan, John, 2012. "Voluntary voting: Costs and benefits," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(6), pages 2083-2123.
    5. Matthew Turner & Quinn Weninger, 2005. "Meetings with Costly Participation: An Empirical Analysis," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(1), pages 247-268.
    6. Quinn Weninger & Matthew tunrer, 2004. "Meetings with costly participation: An empirical," Econometric Society 2004 North American Summer Meetings 411, Econometric Society.
    7. Gunnarsson, Victoria & Orazem, Peter & Sanchez, Mario A. & Verdisco, Aimee, 2004. "Does Local School Control Raise Student Outcomes?: Theory and Evidence on the Roles of School Autonomy and Community Participation," Staff General Research Papers Archive 11417, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    8. Taylor, Curtis R. & Yildirim, Huseyin, 2010. "A unified analysis of rational voting with private values and group-specific costs," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 457-471, November.
    9. Marco Faravelli & Santiago Sanchez-Pages, 2015. "(Don’t) Make My Vote Count," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 27(4), pages 544-569, October.
    10. Vijay Krishna & John Morgan, 2015. "Majority Rule and Utilitarian Welfare," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(4), pages 339-375, November.
    11. Garmann, Sebastian, 2016. "Concurrent elections and turnout: Causal estimates from a German quasi-experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 126(PA), pages 167-178.
    12. Bracco, Emanuele & Revelli, Federico, 2018. "Concurrent elections and political accountability: Evidence from Italian local elections," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 135-149.
    13. Gersbach, Hans & Mamageishvili, Akaki & Tejada, Oriol, 2019. "The Effect of Handicaps on Turnout for Large Electorates: An Application to Assessment Voting," CEPR Discussion Papers 13921, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Tasos Kalandrakis, 2009. "Robust rational turnout," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 41(2), pages 317-343, November.
    15. Matthew A. Turner & Quinn Weninger, 2001. "Meetings with Costly Participation: An Empirical Investigation," Working Papers mturner-01-02, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    16. Nikitas Konstantinidis, 2013. "Optimal committee design and political participation," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 25(4), pages 443-466, October.
    17. Puppe, Clemens & Rollmann, Jana, 2022. "Participation in voting over budget allocations: A field experiment," Working Paper Series in Economics 155, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Department of Economics and Management.
    18. Bognar, Katalin & Börgers, Tilman & Meyer-ter-Vehn, Moritz, 2010. "An optimal Voting System when Voting is costly," MPRA Paper 29123, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Revelli, Federico, 2013. "Tax Limits and Local Democracy," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201336, University of Turin.
    20. Sebastian Garmann, 2017. "The effect of a reduction in the opening hours of polling stations on turnout," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 171(1), pages 99-117, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    costly voting; externalities.;

    JEL classification:

    • C70 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - General
    • 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:pra:mprapa:21372. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.