The Winner-Take-All Dilemma

Kazuya Kikuchi and Yukio Koriyama

ISER Discussion Paper from Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University

Abstract: This paper considers collective decision-making when individuals are partitioned into groups (e.g., states or parties) endowed with voting weights. We study a game in which each group chooses an internal rule that specifies the allocation of its weight to the alternatives as a function of its members' preferences. We show that under quite general conditions, the game is a Prisoner's Dilemma: while the winner-take-all rule is a dominant strategy, the equilibrium is Pareto dominated. We also show asymptotic Pareto dominance of the proportional rule. Our numerical computation for the US Electoral College verifies the sensibility of the asymptotic results.

Date: 2019-06, Revised 2019-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-des, nep-gth, nep-mic and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The winner-take-all dilemma (2023)
Working Paper: The Winner-Take-All Dilemma (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dpr:wpaper:1059r

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