Minorities and Storable Votes

Alessandra Casella, Raymond Riezman and Thomas Palfrey

No 5278, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: The paper studies a simple voting system that has the potential to increase the power of minorities without sacrificing aggregate efficiency. Storable votes grant each voter a stock of votes to spend as desired over a series of binary decisions. By cumulating votes on issues that it deems most important, the minority can win occasionally. But because the majority typically can outvote it, the minority wins only if its strength of preferences is high and the majority's strength of preferences is low. The result is that aggregate efficiency either falls slightly or in fact rises. The theoretical predictions are confirmed by a series of experiments: the frequency of minority victories, the relative payoff of the minority versus the majority, and the aggregate payoffs all match the theory.

Keywords: Voting; Minorities; Tyranny of the majority; Experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C9 D7 H1 K19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (50)

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Related works:
Chapter: Minorities and Storable Votes (2013)
Journal Article: Minorities and Storable Votes (2008)
Working Paper: Minorities and Storable Votes (2006)
Working Paper: Minorities and storable votes (2006)
Working Paper: Minorities and Storable Votes (2005)
Working Paper: Minorities and Storable Votes (2005)
Working Paper: Minorities and Storable Votes (2005)
Working Paper: Minorities and Storable Votes (2005)
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