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Designing Institutions to Aggregate Preferences and Information

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  • Meirowitz, Adam

Abstract

I consider the design of policy-making institutions to aggregate preferences and information. A pervasive incentive problem hinders the creation of desirable deliberative institutions; participants that expect to have minority interests have an incentive to misrepresent their information. Moreover, contrary to conventional wisdom, diversity of preferences or information sources amplifies this incentive problem. It is only when all types of participants expect to have the majority interests or no individual's private information can be decisive that full aggregation is possible. The addition of external incentives enables efficient aggregation of preferences and information. The external incentives need only depend on agent actions and, interestingly, the magnitude of these external incentives can be vanishingly small for large groups. These external incentives can be created by augmenting deliberation with concerns about ex-poste monitoring or ex-interum perceptions of competence, the opportunity to trade in information markets, or the opportunity to join clubs with network externalities.

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  • Meirowitz, Adam, 2006. "Designing Institutions to Aggregate Preferences and Information," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 1(4), pages 373-392, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:now:jlqjps:100.00005011
    DOI: 10.1561/100.00005011
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    Cited by:

    1. Sourav Bhattacharya, 2013. "Condorcet Jury Theorem in a Spatial Model of Elections," Working Paper 517, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Nov 2013.
    2. Dimitri Landa & Adam Meirowitz, 2009. "Game Theory, Information, and Deliberative Democracy," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(2), pages 427-444, April.
    3. Henry, Emeric, 2008. "The informational role of supermajorities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(10-11), pages 2225-2239, October.
    4. Nikitas Konstantinidis, 2013. "Optimal committee design and political participation," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 25(4), pages 443-466, October.
    5. Otto H. Swank & Bauke Visser, 2009. "Decision Making and Learning in a Globalizing World," Economics Working Papers ECO2009/20, European University Institute.
    6. Jacob K. Goeree & Leeat Yariv, 2009. "An experimental study of jury deliberation," IEW - Working Papers 438, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    7. Sourav Bhattacharya, 2006. "Preference Monotonicity and Information Aggregation in Elections," Working Paper 325, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Dec 2008.
    8. Adam Meirowitz, 2007. "In Defense of Exclusionary Deliberation: Communication and Voting with Private Beliefs and Values," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 19(3), pages 301-327, July.
    9. Sambuddha Ghosh & Vinayak Tripathi, 2012. "Ideologues Beat Idealists," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 27-49, May.
    10. Patrick Hummel, 2012. "Deliberation in large juries with diverse preferences," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 150(3), pages 595-608, March.
    11. Tomoya Tajika, 2021. "Polarization and inefficient information aggregation under strategic voting," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 56(1), pages 67-100, January.

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