Block Trading, Ownership Structure, and the Value of Corporate Votes

This paper shows that open market block trading can provide a link between private benefits of control enjoyed by large shareholders and the ?voting premium?, i.e. the price difference between voting and non-voting shares. We first demonstrate in a microstructure model with informed traders and short-selling constraint that the trading activity of blockholders translates into a spread between the prices of voting and non-voting shares. In contrast to the extant theory, this model can explain the voting premium in the absence of corporate takeovers. In the empirical part of the paper, we show for a comprehensive sample of German dual-class companies that large trades occur more often in voting shares than in non-voting shares, and that the block trading activity in voting shares is strongly correlated with the voting premium. Moreover, the effect of the ownership structure on the voting premium becomes insignificant once we control for the block trading activity in voting shares. --

Reliability of voting in fault-tolerant software systems for small output spaces

Under a voting strategy in a fault-tolerant software system there is a difference between correctness and agreement. An independent N-version programming reliability model is proposed for treating small output spaces which distinguishes between correctness and agreement. System reliability is investigated using analytical relationships and simulation. A consensus majority voting strategy is proposed and its performance is analyzed and compared with other voting strategies. Consensus majority strategy automatically adapts the voting to different component reliability and output space cardinality characteristics. It is shown that absolute majority voting strategy provides a lower bound on the reliability provided by the consensus majority, and 2-of-n voting strategy an upper bound. If r is the cardinality of the output space it is proved the 1/r is a lower bound on the average reliability of fault-tolerant system components below which the system reliability begins to deteriorate as more versions are added

Dissent voting behavior of central bankers: what do we really know?

Abstract We examine the determinants of the dissent in central bank boards’ voting records about monetary policy rates in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S. In contrast to previous studies, we consider about 25 different macroeconomic, financial, institutional, psychological or preference-related factors jointly and deal formally with the attendant model uncertainty using Bayesian model averaging. We find that the rate of dissent is between 5% and 20% in these central banks. Our results suggest that most regressors, including those capturing the effect of inflation and output, are not robust determinants of voting dissent. The difference in central bankers’ preferences is likely to drive the dissent in the U.S. Fed and the Bank of England. For the Czech and Hungarian central banks, average dissent tends to be larger when policy rates are changed. Some evidence is also found that food price volatility tends to increase the voting dissent in the U.S. Fed and in Riksbank.monetary policy, voting record, dissent

The Galam Model of Minority Opinion Spreading and the Marriage Gap

In 2002, Serge Galam designed a model of a minority opinion spreading. The effect is expected to lead a conservative minority to prevail if the issue is discussed long enough. Here we analyze the marriage gap, i.e. the difference in voting for Bush and Kerry in 2004 between married and unmarried people. It seems possible to interpret this marriage gap in terms of the Galam model.Comment: 6 page

Party competition in a heterogeneous electorate – the role of dominant-issue-voters

This paper provides a theoretical model of party competition in a heterogeneous electorate. The latter consists of numerous groups of dominant-issue-voters who base their voting decision primarily on one issue of the political agenda. Parties follow a lexicographic objective function, aiming to gain power at minimum programmatic concessions. The emerging pattern of movement in policy platforms is fundamentally different to the concept of convergence proposed by the spatial theory of voting. Rather than the centre of the scale of policy preference, its extreme ends, occupied by dominant-issue-voters, attract the policy platforms. The difference in policy platforms is not reduced. The conclusions are found to be compatible with some major empirical findings of the Manifesto Research Group. --voters,incomplete information,political parties,convergence

Reaching Consensus Under a Deadline

Committee decisions are complicated by a deadline, e.g., the next start of a budget, or the beginning of a semester. In committee hiring decisions, it may be that if no candidate is supported by a strong majority, the default is to hire no one - an option that may cost dearly. As a result, committee members might prefer to agree on a reasonable, if not necessarily the best, candidate, to avoid unfilled positions. In this paper, we propose a model for the above scenario - Consensus Under a Deadline (CUD)- based on a time-bounded iterative voting process. We provide convergence guarantees and an analysis of the quality of the final decision. An extensive experimental study demonstrates more subtle features of CUDs, e.g., the difference between two simple types of committee member behavior, lazy vs.~proactive voters. Finally, a user study examines the differences between the behavior of rational voting bots and real voters, concluding that it may often be best to have bots play on the voters' behalf

Consideration sets, intentions and the inclusion of "Don't know" in a two-stage model for voter choice

We present a statistical model for voter choice that incorporates a consideration set stage and final vote intention stage. The first stageinvolves a multivariate probit model for the vector of probabilities that a candidate or a party gets considered. The second stage of the model is a multinomial probit model for the actual choice. In both stages we use asexplanatory variables data on voter choice at the previous election, as well as socio-demographic respondent characteristics. Importantly, our modelexplicitly accounts for the three types of "missing data" encountered in polling. First, we include a no-vote option in the final vote intention stage. Second, the "do not know" response is assumed to arise from too little difference in the utility between the two most preferred options in the consideration set. Third, the "do not want to say" response is modelled as a missing observation on the most preferred alternative in the consideration set. Thus, we consider the missing data generating mechanism to be non-ignorable and build a model based on utility maximization to describe the voting intentions of these respondents. We illustrate the merits of the model as we have information on a sample of about 5000 individuals from the Netherlands for who we know how they voted last time (if at all), which parties they would consider for the upcoming election,and what their voting intention is. A unique feature of the data set is that information is available on actual individual voting behavior, measured at the day of election. We find that the inclusion of the consideration set stage in the model enables the user to make more precise inferences on the competitive structure in the political domain and to get better out-of-sample forecasts.Bayesian method;Choice model;Election data;Polling;Probit model

Electoral competition in a multidimensional political arena - parallel moves instead of convergence in policy platforms

This paper provides a theoretical model of electoral competition in a multidimensional political arena with a heterogenous electorate and politically active interest groups. The emerging pattern of movement in policy platforms is fundamentally different to the concept of convergence proposed by the spatial theory of voting. Rather than the centre of the scale of policy preference, its extreme ends, occupied by dominant-issue-voters and interest groups, attract the policy platforms. The platforms move in parallel instead of towards each other, while the difference in policy platforms is reduced only under certain conditions. --voters,interest groups,ideology,political parties,convergence