Buying voters with uncertain instrumental preferences

Charles Louis-Sidois () and Leon Andreas Musolff ()
Additional contact information
Charles Louis-Sidois: Vienna University of Economics and Business
Leon Andreas Musolff: Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Theoretical Economics, 2024, vol. 19, issue 3

Abstract: We analyze a vote-buying model where the members of a committee vote on a proposal important to a vote buyer. Each member incurs a privately-drawn disutility if the proposal passes. We characterize the cheapest combination of bribes that guarantees the proposal passes in all equilibria. When members vote simultaneously, the number of bribes is at least 50% larger than the number of votes required to pass the proposal (vote threshold). The number of bribes increases with the dispersion of the disutility distribution and all members are bribed with sufficient dispersion. A proportional increase in the number of members and the vote threshold leads to a less-than-proportional increase in capture cost, and the cost may increase with the vote threshold. With sequential voting and disutility distribution $U[0,1]$, all members are bribed and bribes are equal. Finally, sequential voting increases capture cost in small committees and decreases it in large committees.

Keywords: Vote buying; committee (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-07-24
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://econtheory.org/ojs/index.php/te/article/viewFile/20241305/39765/1231 (application/pdf)

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:the:publsh:4658

Access Statistics for this article

Theoretical Economics is currently edited by Simon Board, Todd D. Sarver, Juuso Toikka, Rakesh Vohra, Pierre-Olivier Weill

More articles in Theoretical Economics from Econometric Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Martin J. Osborne ().