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Garbled Elections

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Author Info
Patrick W. Schmitz (Department of Economics, University of Cologne, Germany, and CEPR. patrick.schmitz@uni-bonn.de, http://www.wipol.uni-bonn.de/˜schmitz.)
Thomas Tröger (Department of Economics, University of Bonn, Germany. ttroeger@unibonn.de, http://www.econ3.uni-bonn.de/troeger/.)

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Abstract

Majority rules are frequently used to decide whether or not a public good should be provided, but will typically fail to achieve an efficient provision. We provide a worst-case analysis of the majority rule with an optimally chosen majority threshold, assuming that voters have independent private valuations and are exante symmetric (provision cost shares are included in the valuations). We show that if the population is large it can happen that the optimal majority rule is essentially no better than a random provision of the public good. But the optimal majority rule is worst-case asymptotically efficient in the large-population limit if (i) the voters’ expected valuation is bounded away from 0, and (ii) an absolute bound for valuations is known.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich in its series Discussion Papers with number 195.

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Date of creation: Oct 2006
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Handle: RePEc:trf:wpaper:195

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  1. Young, Peyton, 1995. "Optimal Voting Rules," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 51-64, Winter. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Rustichini, Aldo & Satterthwaite, Mark A & Williams, Steven R, 1994. "Convergence to Efficiency in a Simple Market with Incomplete Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(5), pages 1041-63, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Timothy J. Feddersen & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 1995. "The Swing Voter's Curse," Discussion Papers 1064, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science. [Downloadable!]
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  4. Ledyard, John O. & Palfrey, Thomas R., 2002. "The approximation of efficient public good mechanisms by simple voting schemes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 153-171, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Groves, Theodore, 1973. "Incentives in Teams," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(4), pages 617-31, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Barbera, Salvador & Matthew O. Jackson, 2004. "On the Weights of Nations: Assigning Voting Weights in a Heterogeneous Union," Working Papers 1196, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences. [Downloadable!]
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  7. Mark A. Satterthwaite & Steven R. Williams, 2002. "The Optimality of a Simple Market Mechanism," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(5), pages 1841-1863, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Mark Fey & Jaehoon Kim, 2002. "The Swing Voter's Curse: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 1264-1268, September. [Downloadable!]
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