Aggregating Local Preferences to Guide Marginal Policy Adjustments

Daniel Benjamin, Ori Heffetz, Miles Kimball and Nichole Szembrot

American Economic Review, 2013, vol. 103, issue 3, 605-10

Abstract: We propose a social choice rule for aggregating preferences elicited from surveys into a marginal adjustment of policy from the status quo. The mechanism is: (i) symmetric in its treatment of survey respondents; (ii) ordinal, using only the orientation of respondents' indifference surfaces; (iii) local, using only preferences in the neighborhood of current policy; and (iv) what we call "first-order strategy-proof," making the gains from misreporting preferences second order. The mechanism could be applied to guide policy based on how policy affects responses to subjective well-being surveys.

JEL-codes: E61 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.103.3.605
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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