Simple vs. Sophisticated Rules for the Allocation of Voting Weights

N. Maaser ()
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N. Maaser: University of Bremen

Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics, 2017, vol. 34, issue 1, No 5, 67-78

Abstract: Abstract Representatives from differently sized constituencies form an assembly which takes political decisions by a weighted voting rule and adopts the ideal point of the weighted median amongst them. Preferences of each representative are supposed to coincide with the constituency’s median voter. Analytic results by Kurz et al. (J Polit Econ, 2017) for infinite chains of assemblies suggest that individual voters’ a priori influence on the collective decision can be equalized by allocating voting weight proportional to the square root of constituency sizes. This paper investigates numerically the performance of this simple square root rule and sophisticated variations, based on the Shapley value or the Penrose–Banzhaf power measure, when the number of constituencies is still “small”. Monte Carlo simulations indicate that power index-based rules are superior to simple rules.

Keywords: Voting systems; Shapley value; Power indices; Square root rules; inverse problem (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C63 D02 D63 D70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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DOI: 10.1007/s41412-017-0036-5

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