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Beyond Condorcet: Optimal Aggregation Rules Using Voting Records

Author

Listed:
  • Eyal Baharad
  • Jacob Goldberger
  • Moshe Koppel
  • Shmuel Nitzan

Abstract

The difficulty of optimal decision making in uncertain dichotomous choice settings is that it requires information on the expertise of the decision makers (voters). This paper presents a method of optimally weighting voters even without testing them against questions with known right answers. The method is based on the realization that if we can see how voters vote on a variety of questions, it is possible to gauge their respective degrees of expertise by comparing their votes in a suitable fashion, even without knowing the right answers.

Suggested Citation

  • Eyal Baharad & Jacob Goldberger & Moshe Koppel & Shmuel Nitzan, 2011. "Beyond Condorcet: Optimal Aggregation Rules Using Voting Records," CESifo Working Paper Series 3323, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_3323
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Ben Abramowitz & Nicholas Mattei, 2022. "Towards Group Learning: Distributed Weighting of Experts," Papers 2206.02566, arXiv.org.
    2. Ruth Ben-Yashar & Shmuel Nitzan, 2014. "On the significance of the prior of a correct decision in committees," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 76(3), pages 317-327, March.
    3. Alpern, Steve & Chen, Bo, 2017. "The importance of voting order for jury decisions by sequential majority voting," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 258(3), pages 1072-1081.
    4. Steve Alpern & Bo Chen, 2017. "Who should cast the casting vote? Using sequential voting to amalgamate information," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 83(2), pages 259-282, August.
    5. Takuya Sekiguchi, 2023. "Voting Records as Assessors of Premises Behind Collective Decisions," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 32(2), pages 257-275, April.
    6. Ronen Bar-El & Mordechai E. Schwarz, 2021. "A Talmudic constrained voting majority rule," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 189(3), pages 465-491, December.
    7. Steve Alpern & Bo Chen, 2020. "Optimizing Voting Order on Sequential Juries: A Median Voter Theorem and Beyond," Papers 2006.14045, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2021.
    8. Shmuel Nitzan & Tomoya Tajika, 2022. "Inequality of decision-makers’ power and marginal contribution," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 92(2), pages 275-292, March.
    9. Ben Abramowitz & Omer Lev & Nicholas Mattei, 2022. "Who Reviews The Reviewers? A Multi-Level Jury Problem," Papers 2211.08494, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2023.

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    JEL classification:

    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General

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