Effectiveness of Weighted Majority Rules with Random Decision Power Distribution

Daniel Berend and Yuri Chernyavsky

Journal of Public Economic Theory, 2008, vol. 10, issue 3, pages 423-439

Abstract: There is a large body of research studying the conditions under which majority decisions are best. In particular, in many circumstances, the probability of a group to decide correctly is higher than that of a random subgroup. Moreover, the latter probability increases as the subgroup size grows. Here we generalize those results by showing that, in the same setup, the simple majority rule is the most effective of all weighted majority rules when weights are distributed randomly between group members. For special families of weighted majority rules, rule effectiveness increases as we get "closer" to the simple majority rule. Copyright © 2008 Blackwell Publishing, Inc..

Date: 2008

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9779.2008.00370.x link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to 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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:10:y:2008:i:3:p:423-439

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1097-3923

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economic Theory is edited by John P. Conley and Myrna Holtz Wooders

More articles in Journal of Public Economic Theory from Association for Public Economic Theory
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().