The Optimality of Majority Rule: An Information-Choice Perspective

Nina Bobkova

No 19777, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: This paper shows how the voting rule impacts which characteristics of an alternative voters learn about. Before casting their vote, voters face a trade-off between learning about an objective quality of the alternative or about their idiosyncratic match. I show that the further the quota is from majority rule, the less voters learn about the objective quality of the alternative and the more dispersed are their beliefs about it. Among all quotas, the majority rule uniquely (i) aligns votes and beliefs, (ii) maximizes voters’ ex-ante utility, and (iii) aggregates full information for large elections.

Keywords: Committees; Information acquisition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 D72 D82 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-12
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