Voting by conforminy

Bernardo Moreno () and Maria del Pino Ramos-Sosa

No 2015-03, Working Papers from Universidad de Málaga, Department of Economic Theory, Málaga Economic Theory Research Center

Abstract: A group of agents has to decide whether to accept or reject a proposal. Agents vote in favor or against the proposal and, if the number of agents in favor is greater to certain quota, the proposal is accepted. The \textit{socially optimal decision} is the one adopted when all agents vote truthfully. Conformist agents vote based not only on their opinion but also on the vote of other agents. Independent agents only care about their opinion. If all agents are conformists and vote simultaneously, for any quota there are undominated Nash equilibria where the socially optimal decision is not obtained. Next, we provide the number of independents needed for the socially optimal decision to be obtained in any equilibria. It depends on the total number of agents, the quota and the conformity measure. If agents vote sequentially, the socially optimal decision is obtained in any subgame perfect Nash equilibrium.

Keywords: Basque-Elections; Conformity; Voting; Independent agents (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2015-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-mic and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://theeconomics.uma.es/malagawpseries/Papers/METCwp2015-3.pdf First version, 2015 (application/pdf)

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:mal:wpaper:2015-3

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Universidad de Málaga, Department of Economic Theory, Málaga Economic Theory Research Center Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ascension Andina ().