Priorities in the Location of Multiple Public Facilities

A collective decision problem is described by a set of agents, a profile of single-peaked preferences over the real line and a number k of public facilities to be located. We consider public facilities that do not suffer from congestion and are non-excludable. We provide a characterization of the class of rules satisfying Pareto-efficiency, object-population monotonicity and sovereignty. Each rule in the class is a priority rule that selects locations according to a predetermined priority ordering among "interest groups". We characterize each of the subclasses of priority rules that respectively satisfy anonymity, hiding-proofness and strategy-proofness. In particular, we prove that a priority rule is strategy-proof if and only if it partitions the set of agents into a fixed hierarchy. Alternatively, any such rule can be viewed as a collection of fixed-populations generalized peak-selection median rules (Moulin, 1980), that are linked across populations, in a way that we describe.Multiple public facilities; Priority rules; Hierarchical rules; Object-population monotonicity; Sovereignty; Anonymity; Strategy-proofness; Generalized median rules; Hiding-proofness

Public Decisions: Solidarity and the Status Quo

A public decision model specifies a fixed set of alternatives A, a variable population, and a fixed set of admissible preferences over A, common to all agents. We study the implications, for any social choice function, of the principle of solidarity, in the class of all such models. The principle says that when the environment changes, all agents not responsible for the change should all be affected in the same direction: either all weakly win, or all weakly lose. We consider two formulations of this principle: population-monotonicity (Thomson, 1983); and replacement-domination (Moulin, 1987). Under weak additional requirements, but regardless of the domain of preferences considered, each of the two conditions implies (i) coalition-strategy-proofness; (ii) that the choice only depends on the set of preferences that are present in the society and not on the labels of agents, nor on the number of agents having a particular preference; (iii) that there exists a status quo point, i.e. an alternative always weakly Pareto-dominated by the alternative selected by the rule. We also prove that replacement-domination is generally at least as strong as population-monotonicity

Information Transmission in Nested Sender-Receiver Games

We introduce a “nestedness” relation for a general class of sender-receiver games and compare equilibrium properties, in particular the amount of information transmitted, across games that are nested. Roughly, game is nested in game if the players’s optimal actions are closer in game. We show that under some conditions, more information is transmitted in the nested game in the sense that the receiver’s expected equilibrium payoff is higher. The results generalize the comparative statics and welfare comparisons with respect to preferences in the seminal paper of Crawford and Sobel (1982). We also derive new results with respect to changes in priors in addition to changes in preferences. We illustrate the usefulness of the results in three applications: (i) delegation to an intermediary with a different prior, the choice between centralization and delegation, and two-way communication with an informed principal

Priorities in the Location of Multiple Public Facilities

A collective decision problem is described by a set of agents, a profile of single-peaked preferences over the real line and a number k of public facilities to be located. We consider public facilities that do not su¤er from congestion and are non-excludable. We provide a characterization of the class of rules satisfying Pareto-efficiency, object-population monotonicity and sovereignty. Each rule in the class is a priority rule that selects locations according to a predetermined priority ordering among interest groups. We characterize each of the subclasses of priority rules that respectively satisfy anonymity, hiding-proofness and strategy-proofness. In particular, we prove that a priority rule is strategy-proof if and only if it partitions the set of agents into a fixed hierarchy. Alternatively, any such rule can be viewed as a collection of fixed-populations generalized peak-selection median rules (Moulin, 1980), that are linked across populations, in a way that we describe

Doubts and Dogmatism in Conflict Behavior

Conflicts are likely less violent if individuals entertain the possibility that the opponent may be right. Why is it so difficult to observe this attitude? In this paper, we consider a game of conflict where two opponents fight in order to impose their preferred policy. Before entering the conflict, one opponent (the agent) trusts the information received by his principal. The principal wants to a↵ect the agent’s e↵ort, but he also cares that the agent selects the correct policy and that he has the right incentives to acquire information.We find conditions under which the principal induces hawkish attitudes in the agent. As a result, the agent has no doubts about the optimality of his preferred policy, conflicts are violent and bad decisions are sometimes made. Under some other conditions, the agent adopts dovish attitudes of systematic doubt and conflicts are less violent

Search, Project Adoption and the Fear of Commitment

We examine project adoption decisions of firms constrained in the number of projects they can handle at once. Adoption requires a commitment for a period of uncertain duration, restricting the firm in subsequent periods. Capacity constraints create a “fear of commitment” — some positive return projects are not adopted. In the sequential move dynamic game, the second mover sometimes adopts projects that were rejected by the first, even when both firms are symmetric and equally informed. We study the e§ects of competition on the fear of commitment, and compare the jointly optimal adoption decision to the behavior of strategic non-cooperative firms

Solidarity in Choosing a Location on a Cycle

We study the implications of two solidarity conditions on the efficient location of a public good on a cycle, when agents have single-peaked, symmetric preferences. Both conditions require that when circumstances change, the agents not responsible for the change should all be affected in the same direction: either they all gain or they all loose. The first condition, population-monotonicity, applies to arrival or departure of one agent. The second, replacement-domination, applies to changes in the preferences of one agent. Unfortunately, no Pareto-efficient solution satisfies any of these properties. However, if agents’ preferred points are restricted to the vertices of a small regular polygon inscribed in the circle, solutions exist. We characterize them as a class of efficient priority rules.Location Theory ; Cycle ; Efficiency, Polation-monotonicity, Reacement-Domination, Single-Peaked