IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/9982.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An Experimental Study of Storable Votes

Author

Listed:
  • Alessandra Casella
  • Andrew Gelman
  • Thomas R. Palfrey

Abstract

The storable votes mechanism is a method of voting for committees that meet periodically to consider a series of binary decisions. Each member is allocated a fixed budget of votes to be cast as desired over the multiple decisions. Voters are induced to spend more votes on those decisions that matter to them most, shifting the ex ante probability of winning away from decisions they value less and towards decisions they value more, typically generating welfare gains over standard majority voting with non-storable votes. The equilibrium strategies have a very intuitive feature---the number of votes cast must be monotonic in the voter's intensity of preferences---but are otherwise difficult to calculate, raising questions of practical implementation. In our experiments, realized efficiency levels were remarkably close to theoretical equilibrium predictions, while subjects adopted monotonic but off-equilibrium strategies. We are lead to conclude that concerns about the complexity of the game may have limited practical relevance.

Suggested Citation

  • Alessandra Casella & Andrew Gelman & Thomas R. Palfrey, 2003. "An Experimental Study of Storable Votes," NBER Working Papers 9982, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9982
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w9982.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. D'Aspremont, C. & Cremer, J. & Gerard-Varet, L.-A., 1990. "Incentives and the existence of Pareto-optimal revelation," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 1990015, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    2. Alessandra Casella & Thomas Palfrey & Raymond Riezman, 2013. "Minorities and Storable Votes," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Raymond Riezman (ed.), International Trade Agreements and Political Economy, chapter 15, pages 247-282, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. McKelvey Richard D. & Palfrey Thomas R., 1995. "Quantal Response Equilibria for Normal Form Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 6-38, July.
    4. McKelvey, Richard D. & Palfrey, Thomas R. & Weber, Roberto A., 2000. "The effects of payoff magnitude and heterogeneity on behavior in 2 x 2 games with unique mixed strategy equilibria," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 523-548, August.
    5. d'Aspremont, Claude & Cremer, Jacques & Gerard-Varet, Louis-Andre, 1990. "Incentives and the existence of Pareto-optimal revelation mechanisms," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 233-254, August.
    6. Casella, Alessandra, 2005. "Storable votes," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 391-419, May.
    7. Casella, Alessandra & Gelman, Andrew & Palfrey, Thomas R., 2006. "An experimental study of storable votes," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 123-154, October.
    8. Paul R. Milgrom & Robert J. Weber, 1985. "Distributional Strategies for Games with Incomplete Information," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 10(4), pages 619-632, November.
    9. Steven J. Brams, 1997. "Game Theory And Emotions," Rationality and Society, , vol. 9(1), pages 91-124, February.
    10. Tilman Borgers, 2004. "Costly Voting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 57-66, March.
    11. Richard D. Mckelvey & Thomas R. Palfrey, 1996. "A Statistical Theory Of Equilibrium In Games," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 186-209, June.
    12. Philipson, Tomas J & Snyder, James M, Jr, 1996. "Equilibrium and Efficiency in an Organized Vote Market," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 89(3-4), pages 245-265, December.
    13. Colin M. Campbell, 1999. "Large Electorates and Decisive Minorities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(6), pages 1199-1217, December.
    14. Richard Mckelvey & Thomas Palfrey, 1998. "Quantal Response Equilibria for Extensive Form Games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(1), pages 9-41, June.
    15. Moulin, H, 1982. "Voting with Proportional Veto Power," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 145-162, January.
    16. Steven J. Brams & Morton D. Davis, 1978. "Optimal Jury Selection: A Game-Theoretic Model for the Exercise of Peremptory Challenges," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 26(6), pages 966-991, December.
    17. Sawyer, Jack & MacRae, Duncan, 1962. "Game Theory and Cumulative Voting in Illinois: 1902–1954," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 56(4), pages 936-946, December.
    18. Jeffrey S. Rosenthal & Martin J. Osborne & Matthew A. Turner, 2000. "Meetings with Costly Participation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 927-943, September.
    19. Mueller, Dennis C., 1978. "Voting by veto," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 57-75, August.
    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. Casella, Alessandra, 2005. "Storable votes," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 391-419, May.
    2. Casella, Alessandra & Turban, Sébastien, 2014. "Democracy undone. Systematic minority advantage in competitive vote markets," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 47-70.
    3. Jacob K. Goeree & Charles A. Holt, 2001. "Ten Little Treasures of Game Theory and Ten Intuitive Contradictions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1402-1422, December.
    4. Yi, Kang-Oh, 2005. "Quantal-response equilibrium models of the ultimatum bargaining game," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 324-348, May.
    5. Eliaz, Kfir & Ray, Debraj & Razin, Ronny, 2007. "Group decision-making in the shadow of disagreement," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 236-273, January.
    6. Gersbach, Hans & Wickramage, Kamali, 2021. "Balanced voting," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 203-229.
    7. Fahrenberger, Theresa & Gersbach, Hans, 2010. "Minority voting and long-term decisions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 329-345, July.
    8. Rogers, Brian W. & Palfrey, Thomas R. & Camerer, Colin F., 2009. "Heterogeneous quantal response equilibrium and cognitive hierarchies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(4), pages 1440-1467, July.
    9. Thomas R. Palfrey, 2005. "Laboratory Experiments in Political Economy," Working Papers 91, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    10. Casella, Alessandra & Gelman, Andrew, 2008. "A simple scheme to improve the efficiency of referenda," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(10-11), pages 2240-2261, October.
    11. repec:pri:cepsud:111palfrey is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Friedman, Evan, 2020. "Endogenous quantal response equilibrium," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 620-643.
    13. Thomas R. Palfrey, 2005. "Laboratory Experiments in Political Economy," Working Papers 91, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    14. Chakravarty, Surajeet & Kaplan, Todd R. & Myles, Gareth, 2018. "When costly voting is beneficial," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 33-42.
    15. Pintér, Ágnes & Veszteg, Róbert F., 2010. "Minority vs. majority: An experimental study of standardized bids," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 36-50, March.
    16. Philip A. Haile & Ali Hortaçsu & Grigory Kosenok, 2008. "On the Empirical Content of Quantal Response Equilibrium," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(1), pages 180-200, March.
    17. Alcocer, Christian Diego & Jeitschko, Thomas D. & Shupp, Robert, 2020. "Naive and sophisticated mixing: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 157-173.
    18. Choo, Lawrence C.Y & Kaplan, Todd R., 2014. "Explaining Behavior in the "11-20" Game," MPRA Paper 52808, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Benjamin Patrick Evans & Mikhail Prokopenko, 2021. "Bounded rationality for relaxing best response and mutual consistency: The Quantal Hierarchy model of decision-making," Papers 2106.15844, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2023.
    20. Sauermann, Jan & Beckmann, Paul, 2019. "The influence of group size on distributional fairness under voting by veto," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 90-102.
    21. Matthew Turner & Quinn Weninger, 2005. "Meetings with Costly Participation: An Empirical Analysis," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(1), pages 247-268.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • C9 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:nbr:nberwo:9982. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.