Social choice theory, game theory, and positive political theory

We consider the relationships between the collective preference and non-cooperative game theory approaches to positive political theory. In particular, we show that an apparently decisive difference between the two approachesthat in sufficiently complex environments (e.g. high-dimensional choice spaces) direct preference aggregation models are incapable of generating any prediction at all, whereas non-cooperative game-theoretic models almost always generate predictionis indeed only an apparent difference. More generally, we argue that when modeling collective decisions there is a fundamental tension between insuring existence of well-defined predictions, a criterion of minimal democracy, and general applicability to complex environments; while any two of the three are compatible under either approach, neither collective preference nor non-cooperative game theory can support models that simultaneously satisfy all three desiderata

The Economics of 'Acting White'

This paper formalizes a sociological phenomenon entitled 'acting white'. The key idea is that individuals face a tension between signaling their type to the outside labor market and signaling their type to a peer group: signals that induce high wages can be signals that induce peer rejection. We prove three basic results: (1) there exists no equilibria in which all types of individuals adopt distinct educational investment levels; (2) when individuals are not too patient, all equilibria satisfying a standard refinement involve a binary partition of the type space in which all types accepted by the group pool on a common low education level and all types rejected by the group separate at distinctly higher levels of education with correspondingly higher wages; and (3) when individuals are very patient, there is an increase in the variation of education levels within the group and an increase in the variance of types deemed acceptable by the group. The more those involved discount the future, the more salient peer pressure becomes and the more homogenous groups become.

Sophisticated Sincerity: Voting Over Endogenous Agendas

The empirical findings on whether or not legislators vote strategically are mixed. This is at least partly due to the fact that to establish any hypothesis on strategic voting, legislators' preferences need to be known; and these are typically private data. In this note it is shown that, under complete information, if decision-making is by the amendment procedure and if the agenda is set endogenously, then sophisticated (strategic) voting over the resulting agenda is observationally equivalent to sincere voting. The voting strategies, however, are sophisticated. This fact has direct implications for empirical work on sophisticated voting

Sincere Voting in Models of Legislative Elections

An assumption of sincere voting for one's most preferred candidate is frequently invoked in models of electoral competition in which the elected legislature consists of more than a single candidate or party. Voters, however, have preferences over policy outcomes--which are determined by the ex post elected legislature--and not over candidates per se. This observation provokes the following question. For what methods of translating election results into legislative policy outcomes is sincere voting rational in the legislative election? This paper provides the answer. One of the principal implications is that for sincerity to be rational, there necessarily exists a candidate for office whose electoral platform is the final legislative outcome, whether or not that candidate is elected to the legislature

Electing Legislatures

A "legislature" is defined to be an assembly of at least two elected officials which selects final policy outcomes. Legislative elections therefore concern the electoral choice of such an assembly. The classical two-candidate, single-district, model of electoral competition is not a legislative election in the sense of this essay. In the classical model the legislature comprises the winning candidate: this agent has monopolistic control of the legislative decision-making machinery, and implements his winning policy. With this system, voters have a straightforward "best" voting rule for any pair of candidate positions offered in the election: vote sincerely. In the multi-stage legislative electoral system, final outcomes depend on the entire composition of the legislature and the specifics of legislative decision-making. With such a system, voters' decisions are considerably less straightforward, which in turn complicates candidates' strategic choices. This paper presents a fairly technical review of the spatial-theoretic literature on legislative elections. The paper was commissioned by Norman Schofield for the conference on Coalition Theory and Public Choice (Fiesole, Italy: May 1987). On the one hand, the task was easy: the literature is small and much of it involves my own work. On the other hand, the task was difficult: the literature is small and much of it involves my own work. In any event, I am grateful to Professor Schofield for giving me the opportunity and incentive to raise some issues with which I have long been concerned. He is in no way responsible for any errors or omissions the paper might contain. I feel perfectly free, however, to blame him for the appearance of self-indulgence that the essay surely has