Let Them Burn Money: Making Elections More Informative

Colin Campbell ()
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Colin Campbell: Rutgers University

Departmental Working Papers from Rutgers University, Department of Economics

Abstract: A standard election in which each voter chooses a single alternative permits voters little scope to express the intensity of their preferences. Allowing more complex statements of preferences may not alleviate the problem if voters behave strategically, as only certain statements are credible. I consider the implications of allowing voters to burn money as part of the voting procedure. In an environment with two alternatives and voters with interdependent values, I find necessary and sufficient conditions for all choice functions that are minimally responsive to voter preferences to be implementable with money burning. Furthermore, I show that any choice rule that treats ex-ante identical voters symmetrically can be implemented with an arbitrarily small amount of money burnt per voter as the set of voters is replicated. Thus, for a large electorate, the informational gains of money burning can be reaped at virtually no social cost.

Keywords: Elections; Voting Mechanisms; Interdependent Values; Information Aggregation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D80 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
Date: 2005-11-15
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rut:rutres:200512

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