Optimal Voting Rules

Alex Gershkov, Benny Moldovanu () and Xianwen Shi

The Review of Economic Studies, 2017, vol. 84, issue 2, 688-717

Abstract: We derive the incentive compatible and ex-ante welfare maximizing ($i.e.$ utilitarian) mechanism for settings with an arbitrary number of agents and alternatives where the privately informed agents have single-crossing and single-peaked preferences. The optimal outcome can be implemented by modifying a sequential voting scheme that is used in many legislatures and committees. The modification uses a flexible majority threshold for each of several alternatives, and allows us to replicate, via a single sequential procedure, the entire class of anonymous, unanimous, and dominant strategy incentive compatible mechanisms. Our analysis relies on elegant characterizations of this class of mechanisms for single-peaked and single-crossing preferences.

Keywords: Sequential voting; Single-crossing preferences; Generalized median; Dominant strategy implementation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 D72 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Optimal Voting Rules (2013)
Working Paper: Optimal Voting Rules (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:restud:v:84:y:2017:i:2:p:688-717.

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