IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucy/cypeua/09-2019.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Information Aggregation with Runoff Voting

Author

Listed:
  • Nikolas Tsakas
  • Dimitrios Xefteris

Abstract

A majority of independent voters wants to choose the alternative that better matches the state of the world, but may disagree on its identity due to private information. When we have an arbitrary number of alternatives and also sophisticated partisan voters exist in the electorate, the election of the correct alternative is a real challenge. Building upon McLennan (1998) and Barelli et al. (2017) we show that runoff voting -one of the most intuitive electoral systems- achieves asymptotically full information equivalence. That is, when the society is large, it can lead to the election of the correct alternative under fairly general assumptions regarding the information structure and partisans' preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Nikolas Tsakas & Dimitrios Xefteris, 2019. "Information Aggregation with Runoff Voting," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 09-2019, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucy:cypeua:09-2019
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.econ.ucy.ac.cy/RePEc/papers/09-19.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Myerson, Roger B. & Weber, Robert J., 1993. "A Theory of Voting Equilibria," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(1), pages 102-114, March.
    2. Bouton, Laurent & Castanheira, Micael & Llorente-Saguer, Aniol, 2016. "Divided majority and information aggregation: Theory and experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 114-128.
    3. Ahn, David S. & Oliveros, Santiago, 2016. "Approval voting and scoring rules with common values," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 304-310.
    4. Laurent Bouton & Aniol Llorente-Saguer & Frédéric Malherbe, 2018. "Get Rid of Unanimity Rule: The Superiority of Majority Rules with Veto Power," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(1), pages 107-149.
    5. Bernheim, B Douglas, 1984. "Rationalizable Strategic Behavior," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(4), pages 1007-1028, July.
    6. Laurent Bouton & Micael Castanheira, 2012. "One Person, Many Votes: Divided Majority and Information Aggregation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(1), pages 43-87, January.
    7. David P. Myatt, 2007. "On the Theory of Strategic Voting -super-1," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(1), pages 255-281.
    8. Bouton, Laurent & Gratton, Gabriele, 2015. "Majority runoff elections: strategic voting and Duverger's hypothesis," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 10(2), May.
    9. 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.
    10. Goertz, Johanna M.M. & Maniquet, François, 2011. "On the informational efficiency of simple scoring rules," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(4), pages 1464-1480, July.
    11. César Martinelli, 2002. "Simple plurality versus plurality runoff with privately informed voters," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 19(4), pages 901-919.
    12. repec:ulb:ulbeco:2013/162238 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Thomas Piketty, 2000. "Voting as Communicating," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 67(1), pages 169-191.
    14. Feddersen, Timothy J & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 1996. "The Swing Voter's Curse," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 408-424, June.
    15. Laurent Bouton, 2013. "A Theory of Strategic Voting in Runoff Elections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(4), pages 1248-1288, June.
    16. Pearce, David G, 1984. "Rationalizable Strategic Behavior and the Problem of Perfection," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(4), pages 1029-1050, July.
    17. Tsakas, Nikolas & Xefteris, Dimitrios, 2021. "Stress-testing the runoff rule in the laboratory," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 18-38.
    18. McLennan, Andrew, 1998. "Consequences of the Condorcet Jury Theorem for Beneficial Information Aggregation by Rational Agents," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(2), pages 413-418, June.
    19. Bag, Parimal Kanti & Sabourian, Hamid & Winter, Eyal, 2009. "Multi-stage voting, sequential elimination and Condorcet consistency," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 1278-1299, May.
    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. Tsakas, Nikolas & Xefteris, Dimitrios, 2021. "Stress-testing the runoff rule in the laboratory," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 18-38.
    2. Tsakas, Nikolas & Xefteris, Dimitrios, 2023. "The last temptation: Is group-based voting resilient to pivotal considerations?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).

    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. Bouton, Laurent & Castanheira, Micael & Llorente-Saguer, Aniol, 2016. "Divided majority and information aggregation: Theory and experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 114-128.
    2. Tsakas, Nikolas & Xefteris, Dimitrios, 2021. "Stress-testing the runoff rule in the laboratory," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 18-38.
    3. Laurent Bouton & Micael Castanheira, 2012. "One Person, Many Votes: Divided Majority and Information Aggregation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(1), pages 43-87, January.
    4. Bouton, Laurent & Castanheira, Micael & Llorente-Saguer, Aniol, 2016. "Divided majority and information aggregation: Theory and experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 114-128.
    5. Laurent Bouton & Jorge Gallego & Aniol Llorente-Saguer & Rebecca Morton, 2022. "Run-off Elections in the Laboratory," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(641), pages 106-146.
    6. Dhillon, Amrita & Kotsialou, Grammateia & Xefteris, Dimitris, 2021. "Information Aggregation with Delegation of Votes," SocArXiv ubk7p, Center for Open Science.
    7. Bouton, Laurent & Castanheira, Micael & Llorente-Saguer, Aniol, 2017. "Multicandidate elections: Aggregate uncertainty in the laboratory," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 132-150.
    8. Tsakas, Nikolas & Xefteris, Dimitrios, 2023. "The last temptation: Is group-based voting resilient to pivotal considerations?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    9. Bouton, Laurent & Ogden, Benjamin, 2017. "Ethical Voting in Multicandidate Elections," CEPR Discussion Papers 12374, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Laurent Bouton & Benjamin G. Ogden, 2017. "Group-based Voting in Multicandidate Elections," NBER Working Papers 23898, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Herrera, Helios & Llorente-Saguer, Aniol & McMurray, Joseph C., 2019. "Information aggregation and turnout in proportional representation: A laboratory experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    12. Martin Gregor, 2013. "The Optimal Ballot Structure for Double-Member Districts," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp493, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    13. Laurent Bouto & Aniol Llorente-Saguer & Fédéric Malherbe, 2014. "Get Rid of Unanimity: The Superiority of Majority Rule with Veto Power," Working Papers 722, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    14. Laurent Bouto & Aniol Llorente-Saguer & Fédéric Malherbe, 2014. "Get Rid of Unanimity: The Superiority of Majority Rule with Veto Power," Working Papers 722, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    15. Matías Núñez, 2014. "The strategic sincerity of Approval voting," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 56(1), pages 157-189, May.
    16. François Maniquet & Massimo Morelli, 2015. "Approval quorums dominate participation quorums," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 45(1), pages 1-27, June.
    17. Laurent Bouton & Aniol Llorente-Saguer & Antonin Macé & Dimitrios Xefteris, 2021. "Voting Rights, Agenda Control and Information Aggregation," NBER Working Papers 29005, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Hughes, Niall, 2016. "Voting in legislative elections under plurality rule," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 51-93.
    19. Bouton, Laurent & Gratton, Gabriele, 2015. "Majority runoff elections: strategic voting and Duverger's hypothesis," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 10(2), May.
    20. J. Goertz, 2014. "Inefficient committees: small elections with three alternatives," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(2), pages 357-375, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    runoff voting; information aggregation; partisan voters; Condorcet jury theorem;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    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:ucy:cypeua:09-2019. 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://www.ucy.ac.cy/econ/?lang=en .

    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.