Measuring voting power in convex policy spaces

Classical power index analysis considers the individual's ability to influence the aggregated group decision by changing its own vote, where all decisions and votes are assumed to be binary. In many practical applications we have more options than either "yes" or "no". Here we generalize three important power indices to continuous convex policy spaces. This allows the analysis of a collection of economic problems like e.g. tax rates or spending that otherwise would not be covered in binary models.Comment: 31 pages, 9 table

Generalized roll-call model for the Shapley-Shubik index

In 1996 Dan Felsenthal and Mosh\'e Machover considered the following model. An assembly consisting of $n$ voters exercises roll-call. All $n!$ possible orders in which the voters may be called are assumed to be equiprobable. The votes of each voter are independent with expectation $0<p<1$ for an individual vote {\lq\lq}yea{\rq\rq}. For a given decision rule $v$ the \emph{pivotal} voter in a roll-call is the one whose vote finally decides the aggregated outcome. It turned out that the probability to be pivotal is equivalent to the Shapley-Shubik index. Here we give an easy combinatorial proof of this coincidence, further weaken the assumptions of the underlying model, and study generalizations to the case of more than two alternatives.Comment: 19 pages; we added a reference to an earlier proof of our main resul

Which criteria qualify power indices for applications? : A comment to "The story of the poor Public Good index"

We discuss possible criteria that may qualify or disqualify power indices for applications. Instead of providing final answers we merely ask questions that are relevant from our point of view and summarize some material from the literature.Comment: 6 pages; typos correcte

Axiomatizations for the Shapley-Shubik power index for games with several levels of approval in the input and output

The Shapley-Shubik index is a specialization of the Shapley value and is widely applied to evaluate the power distribution in committees drawing binary decisions. It was generalized to decisions with more than two levels of approval both in the input and the output. The corresponding games are called $(j,k)$ simple games. Here we present a new axiomatization for the Shapley-Shubik index for $(j,k)$ simple games as well as for a continuous variant, which may be considered as the limit case.Comment: 25 page