IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/igi/igierp/338.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Option to Wait in Collective Decisions

Author

Listed:
  • Matthias Messner
  • Mattias K. Polborn

Abstract

We consider a model in which voters over time receive more information about their preferences concerning an irreversible social decision. Voters can either implement the project in the first period, or they can postpone the decision to the second period. We analyze the effects of different majority rules. Individual first period voting behavior may become "less conservative" under supermajority rules, and it is even possible that a project is implemented in the first period under a supermajority rule that would not be implemented under simple majority rule. We characterize the optimal majority rule, which is a supermajority rule. In contrast to individual investment problems, society may be better off if the option to postpone the decision did not exist. These results are qualitatively robust to natural generalizations of our model.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthias Messner & Mattias K. Polborn, 2008. "The Option to Wait in Collective Decisions," Working Papers 338, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    • Handle: RePEc:igi:igierp:338
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.unibocconi.it/igier/igi/wp/2008/338.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tullock, Gordon, 1998. "Reply to Guttman," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 215-218, May.
    2. Matthias Messner & Mattias K. Polborn, 2004. "Voting on Majority Rules," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(1), pages 115-132.
    3. Roger B. Myerson & Daniel Diermeier, 1999. "Bicameralism and Its Consequences for the Internal Organization of Legislatures," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(5), pages 1182-1196, December.
    4. Philippe Aghion & Patrick Bolton, 2003. "Incomplete Social Contracts," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(1), pages 38-67, March.
    5. Feddersen, Timothy & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 1998. "Convicting the Innocent: The Inferiority of Unanimous Jury Verdicts under Strategic Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(1), pages 23-35, March.
    6. Dal Bo, Ernesto, 2006. "Committees with supermajority voting yield commitment with flexibility," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(4-5), pages 573-599, May.
    7. Feddersen, Timothy J & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 1996. "The Swing Voter's Curse," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 408-424, June.
    8. Austen-Smith, David & Banks, Jeffrey S., 1996. "Information Aggregation, Rationality, and the Condorcet Jury Theorem," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 90(1), pages 34-45, March.
    9. Glazer, Amihai, 1989. "Politics and the Choice of Durability," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(5), pages 1207-1213, December.
    10. Philip Bond & Hülya Eraslan, 2004. "Strategic Voting over Strategic Proposals, Second Version," PIER Working Paper Archive 07-014, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 02 Jan 2007.
    11. Caplin, Andrew S & Nalebuff, Barry J, 1988. "On 64%-Majority Rule," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(4), pages 787-814, July.
    12. Gradstein, Mark, 1999. "Optimal taxation and fiscal constitution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(3), pages 471-485, June.
    13. Guttman, Joel M., 1998. "Unanimity and majority rule: the calculus of consent reconsidered," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 189-207, May.
    14. Philip Bond & Hülya Eraslan, 2010. "Strategic Voting over Strategic Proposals," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(2), pages 459-490.
    15. Fernandez, Raquel & Rodrik, Dani, 1991. "Resistance to Reform: Status Quo Bias in the Presence of Individual-Specific Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1146-1155, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bruno Strulovici, 2010. "Learning While Voting: Determinants of Collective Experimentation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(3), pages 933-971, May.
    2. Bruno Strulovici, 2010. "Learning While Voting: Determinants of Collective Experimentation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(3), pages 933-971, 05.

    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. Messner, Matthias & Polborn, Mattias K., 2012. "The option to wait in collective decisions and optimal majority rules," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(5), pages 524-540.
    2. Giovanni Maggi & Massimo Morelli, 2006. "Self-Enforcing Voting in International Organizations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(4), pages 1137-1158, September.
    3. Philippe Aghion & Alberto Alesina & Francesco Trebbi, 2004. "Endogenous Political Institutions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(2), pages 565-611.
    4. Attanasi, Giuseppe & Corazzini, Luca & Passarelli, Francesco, 2017. "Voting as a lottery," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 129-137.
    5. Hans Gersbach, 2002. "Democratic Mechanisms: Double Majority Rules and Flexible Agenda Costs," CESifo Working Paper Series 749, CESifo.
    6. Marco Faravelli & Priscilla Man, 2021. "Generalized majority rules: utilitarian welfare in large but finite populations," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 72(1), pages 21-48, July.
    7. Ernesto Dal Bo, 2002. "Supermajority Voting Rules: Balancing Commitment and Flexibility," Economics Series Working Papers 132, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    8. Dal Bo, Ernesto, 2006. "Committees with supermajority voting yield commitment with flexibility," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(4-5), pages 573-599, May.
    9. Prato, Carlo & Wolton, Stephane, 2022. "Wisdom of the crowd? Information aggregation in representative democracy," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 86-95.
    10. Gersbach, Hans & Mamageishvili, Akaki & Tejada, Oriol, 2022. "Appointed learning for the common good: Optimal committee size and monetary transfers," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 153-176.
    11. Henry, Emeric, 2008. "The informational role of supermajorities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(10-11), pages 2225-2239, October.
    12. Mark Gradstein, 2018. "Self-imposition of public oversight," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 175(1), pages 95-109, April.
    13. Mattias Polborn, 2000. "Endogenous Majority Rules with Changing Preferences," University of Western Ontario, Departmental Research Report Series 200012, University of Western Ontario, Department of Economics.
    14. Simona Fabrizi & Steffen Lippert & Addison Pan & Matthew Ryan, 2022. "A theory of unanimous jury voting with an ambiguous likelihood," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 93(3), pages 399-425, October.
    15. Bhattacharya, Sourav & Duffy, John & Kim, Sun-Tak, 2014. "Compulsory versus voluntary voting: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 111-131.
    16. Laurent Bouton & Micael Castanheira, 2012. "One Person, Many Votes: Divided Majority and Information Aggregation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(1), pages 43-87, January.
    17. Ernst Maug & Bilge Yilmaz, 2002. "Two-Class Voting: A Mechanism for Conflict Resolution," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1448-1471, December.
    18. John Duffy & Sourav Bhattacharya & Sun-Tak Kim, 2012. "Compulsory versus Voluntary Voting: An Experimental Study," Working Paper 492, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Aug 2013.
    19. Kim, Jaehoon & Fey, Mark, 2007. "The swing voter's curse with adversarial preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 135(1), pages 236-252, July.
    20. Matteo Cervellati & Uwe Sunde & Piergiuseppe Fortunato, 2005. "A Dynamic Theory of Endogenous Constitutions," 2005 Meeting Papers 728, Society for Economic Dynamics.

    More about this item

    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:igi:igierp:338. 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: http://www.igier.unibocconi.it/ .

    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.