Quadratic Voting: How Mechanism Design Can Radicalize Democracy

Steven P. Lalley and E. Glen Weyl

AEA Papers and Proceedings, 2018, vol. 108, 33-37

Abstract: Can mechanism design save democracy? We propose a simple design that offers a chance: individuals pay for as many votes as they wish using a number of "voice credits" in the votes they buy. Only quadratic cost induces marginal costs linear in votes purchased and thus welfare optimality if individuals' valuation of votes is proportional to their value of changing the outcome. A variety of analysis and evidence suggests that this still-nascent mechanism has significant promise to robustly correct the failure of existing democracies to incorporate intensity of preference and knowledge.

JEL-codes: D71 D72 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
Note: DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20181002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20181002 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... VzSYyb_4QgvoiOsghO6y (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... Remm1JvdVddSP_jZfoPd (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:apandp:v:108:y:2018:p:33-37

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/subscribe.html

Access Statistics for this article

AEA Papers and Proceedings is currently edited by William Johnson and Kelly Markel

More articles in AEA Papers and Proceedings from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().