Democratic Mechanisms: Double Majority Rules and Flexible Agenda Costs

Hans Gersbach

No 749, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We introduce democratic mechanisms where individual utilities are not observable by other people at the legislative stage. We show that the combination of three rules can yield e±cient provision of public projects: first, flexible and double majority rules where the size of the majority depends on the proposal and taxed and non-taxed individuals need to support the proposal; second, flexible agenda costs where the agenda-setter has to pay a certain amount of money if his proposal does not generate enough supporting votes; third, a ban on subsidies. We also illustrate that higher dimensional uncertainty about project parameters can make it easier to achieve first-best allocations and that universal equal treatment with regard to taxation is undesirable.

Keywords: democratic constitutions; unobservable utilities; double majority rules; flexible agenda cost rules (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D62 D72 H40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Democratic Mechanisms: Double Majority Rules and Flexible Agenda Costs (2005)
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