Collective Choice and Mutual Knowledge Structures

Diana Richards (), Brendan D. McKay () and Whitman A. Richards ()
Additional contact information
Diana Richards: Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA
Brendan D. McKay: Department of Computer Science, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 0200, Australia
Whitman A. Richards: Media Arts and Sciences and Department of Brain and Cognitive Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), 1998, vol. 01, issue 02n03, 221-236

Abstract: The conditions under which the aggregation of information from interacting agents results in a stable or an unstable collective outcome is an important puzzle in the study of complex systems. We show that if a complex system of aggregated choice respects a mutual knowledge structure, then the prospects of a stable collective outcome are considerably improved. Our domain-independent results apply to collective choice ranging from perception, where an interpretation of sense data is made by a collection of perceptual modules, to social choice, where a group decision is made from a set of preferences held by individuals.

Keywords: Complex system; stability; collective choice; knowledge structures; cognition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219525998000156
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:acsxxx:v:01:y:1998:i:02n03:n:s0219525998000156

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S0219525998000156

Access Statistics for this article

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS) is currently edited by Frank Schweitzer

More articles in Advances in Complex Systems (ACS) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().