Optimal Voting Mechanisms on Generalized Single-Peaked Domains

Tobias Rachidi ()

CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series from University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany

Abstract: This paper studies the design of voting mechanisms in a setting with more than two alternatives and voters who have generalized single-peaked preferences derived from median spaces as introduced in [Nehring and Puppe, 2007b]. This class of preferences is considerably larger than the well-known class of preferences that are single-peaked on a line. I characterize the voting rules that maximize the ex-ante utilitarian welfare among all social choice functions satisfying strategy-proofness, anonymity, and surjectivity. The optimal mechanism takes the form of voting by properties, that is, the social choice is determined through a collection of binary votes on subsets of alternatives involving qualified majority requirements that reflect the characteristics of these subsets of alternatives. This general optimality result is applied to the design of voting mechanisms for the provision of two costly public goods subject to the constraint that the provided level of one good is weakly higher than the provided level of the other good.

Keywords: Voting; Generalized Single-Peaked Preferences; Mechanism Design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 D72 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41
Date: 2021-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-des, nep-mic and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2020_214v2

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