IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jothpo/v5y1993i4p523-540.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Problems in the Theory of Institutional Design

Author

Listed:
  • Hannu Nurmi

Abstract

Many political institutions can be viewed as methods for achieving desired outcomes. The problem of institutional design is that of finding a mechanism that would result in those desired outcomes as game-theoretic equilibria. Some results from the institutional design literature are reviewed, and it is argued that many of them are based on assumptions that should be critically examined. We focus on behavioural and information-related assumptions as well as on the concepts of equilibria utilized in the institutional design literature.

Suggested Citation

  • Hannu Nurmi, 1993. "Problems in the Theory of Institutional Design," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 5(4), pages 523-540, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:5:y:1993:i:4:p:523-540
    DOI: 10.1177/0951692893005004004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951692893005004004
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0951692893005004004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Moulin, Herve, 1979. "Dominance Solvable Voting Schemes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(6), pages 1137-1151, November.
    2. Berg, Sven, 1985. "A note on plurality distortion in large committees," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 1(2), pages 271-284.
    3. Moore, John & Repullo, Rafael, 1988. "Subgame Perfect Implementation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(5), pages 1191-1220, September.
    4. Machina, Mark J, 1982. ""Expected Utility" Analysis without the Independence Axiom," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(2), pages 277-323, March.
    5. Rubinstein, Ariel, 1991. "Comments on the Interpretation of Game Theory," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(4), pages 909-924, July.
    6. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    7. Thomas R. Palfrey & Sanjay Srivastava, 1987. "On Bayesian Implementable Allocations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 54(2), pages 193-208.
    8. Norman Schofield, 1978. "Instability of Simple Dynamic Games," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 45(3), pages 575-594.
    9. Palfrey, Thomas R & Srivastava, Sanjay, 1989. "Mechanism Design with Incomplete Information: A Solution to the Implementation Problem," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(3), pages 668-691, June.
    10. Nurmi, Hannu, 1990. "Probability models in constitutional choice," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 107-117, August.
    11. Kramer, Gerald H., 1977. "A dynamical model of political equilibrium," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 310-334, December.
    12. William Vickrey, 1961. "Counterspeculation, Auctions, And Competitive Sealed Tenders," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 16(1), pages 8-37, March.
    13. Nash, John, 1950. "The Bargaining Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 18(2), pages 155-162, April.
    14. Hinich, Melvin J., 1977. "Equilibrium in spatial voting: The median voter result is an artifact," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 208-219, December.
    15. Binmore, Ken, 1987. "Modeling Rational Players: Part I," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 179-214, October.
    16. Partha Dasgupta & Peter Hammond & Eric Maskin, 1979. "The Implementation of Social Choice Rules: Some General Results on Incentive Compatibility," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 46(2), pages 185-216.
    17. Hannu Nurmi, 1991. "Preferences, choices, tournaments: Alternative foundations for the evaluation of voting schemes," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 25(4), pages 393-405, November.
    18. McKelvey, Richard D, 1979. "General Conditions for Global Intransitivities in Formal Voting Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(5), pages 1085-1112, September.
    19. Michael D. Intriligator, 1973. "A Probabilistic Model of Social Choice," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 40(4), pages 553-560.
    20. Rothkopf, Michael H & Teisberg, Thomas J & Kahn, Edward P, 1990. "Why Are Vickrey Auctions Rare?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(1), pages 94-109, February.
    21. Huber, Joel & Payne, John W & Puto, Christopher, 1982. "Adding Asymmetrically Dominated Alternatives: Violations of Regularity and the Similarity Hypothesis," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 9(1), pages 90-98, June.
    22. John A. Ferejohn & David M. Grether & Richard D. McKelvey, 1982. "Implementation of Democratic Social Choice Functions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 49(3), pages 439-446.
    23. Fiorina, Morris P. & Plott, Charles R., 1978. "Committee Decisions under Majority Rule: An Experimental Study," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 72(2), pages 575-598, June.
    24. Nurmi, Hannu & Kacprzyk, Janusz, 1991. "On fuzzy tournaments and their solution concepts in group decision making," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 223-232, March.
    25. Satterthwaite, Mark Allen, 1975. "Strategy-proofness and Arrow's conditions: Existence and correspondence theorems for voting procedures and social welfare functions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 187-217, April.
    26. Peter Coughlin, 1982. "Pareto optimality of policy proposals with probabilistic voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 39(3), pages 427-433, January.
    27. Intriligator, Michael D., 1982. "Probabilistic models of choice," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 157-166, March.
    28. Binmore, Ken, 1988. "Modeling Rational Players: Part II," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(1), pages 9-55, April.
    29. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1986. "Rational Choice and the Framing of Decisions," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(4), pages 251-278, October.
    30. Gibbard, Allan, 1973. "Manipulation of Voting Schemes: A General Result," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(4), pages 587-601, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Roberto Serrano, 2003. "The Theory of Implementation of Social Choice Rules," Working Papers 2003-19, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    2. Maskin, Eric & Sjostrom, Tomas, 2002. "Implementation theory," Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, in: K. J. Arrow & A. K. Sen & K. Suzumura (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 5, pages 237-288, Elsevier.
    3. Nurmi, Hannu & Kacprzyk, Janusz & Fedrizzi, Mario, 1996. "Probabilistic, fuzzy and rough concepts in social choice," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 95(2), pages 264-277, December.
    4. Maskin, Eric & Sjostrom, Tomas, 2002. "Implementation theory," Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare,in: K. J. Arrow & A. K. Sen & K. Suzumura (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 5, pages 237-288 Elsevier.
    5. Corchón, Luis C., 2008. "The theory of implementation : what did we learn?," UC3M Working papers. Economics we081207, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    6. Jackson Matthew O. & Palfrey Thomas R. & Srivastava Sanjay, 1994. "Undominated Nash Implementation in Bounded Mechanisms," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 474-501, May.
    7. Tian, Guoqiang, 1997. "Virtual implementation in incomplete information environments with infinite alternatives and types," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 313-339, October.
    8. Tovey, Craig A., 2010. "The instability of instability of centered distributions," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 53-73, January.
    9. Matthew O. Jackson, 2001. "A crash course in implementation theory," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 18(4), pages 655-708.
    10. Gaudeul, Alexia, 2009. "A (micro) course in microeconomic theory for MSc students," MPRA Paper 15388, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Mackenzie, Andrew & Zhou, Yu, 2022. "Menu mechanisms," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    12. de Groot Ruiz, Adrian & Ramer, Roald & Schram, Arthur, 2016. "Formal versus informal legislative bargaining," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 1-17.
    13. Marek Pycia & Peter Troyan, 2021. "A theory of simplicity in games and mechanism design," ECON - Working Papers 393, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    14. Salvador Barberà & Dolors Berga & Bernardo Moreno, 2020. "Arrow on domain conditions: a fruitful road to travel," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 54(2), pages 237-258, March.
    15. Battigalli, Pierpaolo, 1997. "On Rationalizability in Extensive Games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 40-61, May.
    16. Hammond, Peter J & Zank, Horst, 2013. "Rationality and Dynamic Consistency under Risk and Uncertainty," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1033, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    17. Philippe Jehiel & Moritz Meyer-ter-Vehn & Benny Moldovanu & William R. Zame, 2006. "The Limits of ex post Implementation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(3), pages 585-610, May.
    18. Etro, Federico, 2017. "Research in economics and game theory. A 70th anniversary," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 1-7.
    19. Kotaro Suzumura, 2002. "Introduction to social choice and welfare," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 442, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    20. Marek Pycia & Peter Troyan, 2023. "A Theory of Simplicity in Games and Mechanism Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 91(4), pages 1495-1526, July.

    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:sae:jothpo:v:5:y:1993:i:4:p:523-540. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.