14,584 research outputs found

    Consistent Voting Systems with a Continuum of Voters

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    Voting problems with a continuum of voters and finitely many alternatives are considered. The classical Arrow and Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorems are shown to persist in this model, not for single voters but for coalitions of positive size. The emphasis of the study is on strategic considerations, relaxing the nonmanipulability requirement: are there social choice functions such that for every profile of preferences there exists a strong Nash equilibrium resulting in the alternative assigned by the social choice function? Such social choice functions are called exactly and strongly consistent. The study offers an extension of the work of Peleg (1978a) and others. Specifically, a class of anonymous social choice functions with the required property is characterized through blocking coefficients of alternatives,and associated effectivity functions are studied. Finally, representation of effectivity functions by game forms having a strong Nash equilibrium is studied.public economics ;

    Consistent voting systems with a continuum of voters

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    Voting with preferences over margins of victory

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    This paper analyzes a two-alternative voting model with the distinctive feature that voters have preferences over margins of victory. We study voting contests with a finite as well as an infinite number of voters, and with and without mandatory voting. The main result of the paper is the existence and characterization of a unique equilibrium outcome in all those situations. At equilibrium, voters who prefer a larger support for one of the alternatives vote for such alternative. The model also provides a formal argument for the conditional sincerity voting condition in Alesina and Rosenthal (1995) and the benefit of voting function in Llavador (2006). Finally, we offer new insights on explaining why some citizens may vote strategically for an alternative different from the one declared as the most preferred.Margin of victory, plurality, abstention, strategic voting, committee voting, elections

    Ideology, Competence and Luck: What determines general election results?

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    This paper investigates the impact of luck, defined as global economic growth, and competence, defined as the difference between domestic and world growth, on voting in general elections since 1960. The vote of incumbent parties of the right is found to be sensitive to luck, whereas that of incumbent parties of the left is not. This is consistent with the Clientele Hypothesis given electorates which fail to perfectly distinguish luck from competence. Economic competence plays a strong role in determining the vote, especially in high-income democracies. The electoral reward to competence is essentially equal across parties of either ideology, contra to the Saliency Hypothesis. The data are also supportive of the Territory Hypothesis, namely that greater ideological territory increases a party's relative vote share.voting, ideology, luck, competence

    Limits of the applicability of the social structural model in Czech rural areas

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    This article focuses on the voting behaviour of citizens in rural areas of the Czech Republic. Within the theoretical embodiment of the relationships between the individual in a social structure and voting behaviour, a so-called social-structural model for voting behaviour is often mentioned. However, when explaining the behaviour of the voting behaviour of citizens living under the conditions of the Czech Republic the applicability of this model is of course disputable. Due to the predominant inconsistencies of the social status of citizens of rural areas, it is not at all possible to determine the hypothesis of the applicability of a social-structural model of voting behaviour for citizens living in the conditions of the Czech rural countryside. The aim of this article is, through a case study of Zatec region, to prove the predominant (in)consistency of the social status of the given population.Social structural model, voting behaviour, class identification, rural areas, social status, status (in)consistencies, left-wing right-wing continuum, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, GA, IN,

    Fiscal constitutions and the determinacy of intergenerational transfers.

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    We study the impact offiscal constitutions on intergenerational transfers by analyzing how political veto power influences social security. Transfers in this paper are outcomes of an infinite-horizon social security game among selfish agents whose lifecycles we embed in an overlapping generation model with a linear technology. Policies are decided one period at a time and may change later at zero cost. Simple majoritarian systems, which accord the current median voter maximum fiscal discretion alld minimal influence over future policy, are known to sustain as subgame perfect equilibria all individually rational allocations. Among these are a continuum of stationary sequences (including dynamically inefficient ones) as well as a double continuum of non-stationary sequences (including cyclical or chaotic ones). We investigate how equilibrium is pinned down by constitutional "rules" that give minorities veto power over fiscal policy changes proposed by the majority. Veto power turns out to be equivalent to precommitment. Among subgame perfect equilibria, it eliminates fluctuating and dynamically inefficient transfers, reducing the equilibrium set to weakly increasing transfer sequences that converge to the golden rule. Veto power combined with Markov perfect equilibrium results in a unique, dynamic efficient allocation - the golden rule.Intergenerational transfers; Veto power; Constitutional rules;

    Influential Opinion Leaders

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    We present a simple model of elections in which experts with special interests endorse candidates and endorsements are observed by the voters. We show that the equilibrium election outcome is biased towards the experts' interests even though voters know the distribution of expert interests and account for it when evaluating endorsements. Expert influence is fully decentralized in the sense that individual experts have no incentive to exert influence. The effect arises when some agents prefer, ceteris paribus, to support the winning candidate and when experts are much better informed about the state of the world than are voters.Voting, coordination, experts

    Influential Opinion Leaders

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    We present a simple model of elections in which experts with special interests endorse candidates and endorsements are observed by the voters. We show that the equilibrium election outcome is biased towards the experts' interests even though voters know the distribution of expert interests and account for it when evaluating endorsements. Expert influence is fully decentralized in the sense that individual experts have no incentive to exert influence. The effect arises when some agents prefer, ceteris paribus, to support the winning candidate and when experts are much better informed about the state of the world than are voters.election, manipulation, global game
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