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The Dimensions of Consensus

Author

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  • Benny Moldovanu
  • Alex Gershkov
  • Xianwen Shi

Abstract

We study a multi-dimensional collective decision under incomplete information. Agents have Euclidean preferences and vote by simple majority on each issue (dimension), yielding the coordinate-wise median. Judicious rotations of the orthogonal axes - the issues that are voted upon - lead to welfare improvements. If the agents' types are drawn from a distribution with independent marginals then, under weak conditions, voting on the original issues is not optimal. If, in addition, the marginals are identical, then voting first on the total sum and next on the differences is often welfare superior to voting on the original issues. We also provide various lower bounds on incentive efficiency: in particular, if agents' types are drawn from a log-concave density with symmetric marginals, a second-best voting mechanism attains at least 88% of the first-best efficiency.

Suggested Citation

  • Benny Moldovanu & Alex Gershkov & Xianwen Shi, 2018. "The Dimensions of Consensus," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2018_029, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2018_029
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    File URL: https://www.crctr224.de/research/discussion-papers/archive/dp029
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    multi-dimensional voting ; welfare ; bundling;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations

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