Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP3508
Authors: Alessandra Casella
Abstract: Motivated by the need for more flexible decision-making mechanisms in the European Union, the paper proposes a simple but novel voting scheme for binary decisions taken by committees that meet regularly over time. At each meeting, committee members are allowed to store their vote for future use; the decision is then taken according to the majority of votes cast. The possibility of shifting votes intertemporally allows agents to concentrate their votes when preferences are more intense, and although the scheme will not in general achieve full efficiency, making votes storable typically leads to ex ante welfare gains. The analysis in the paper suggests that the result will hold if one of the following conditions is satisfied: (i) the number of voters is above a minimum threshold; (ii) preferences are not too polarized; (iii) the horizon is long enough.
Keywords: committees; European Union; voting
JEL Codes: C73; D72
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Storable votes (D72) | Increased ex ante welfare (D69) |
| Storable votes (D72) | Higher likelihood of obtaining desired decisions (D79) |
| Intense preferences (D11) | Higher likelihood of obtaining desired decisions (D79) |
| Storable votes (D72) | Concentration of influence during critical decision-making periods (D79) |
| Storable votes (D72) | Shift in probability of pivotal outcomes (C46) |
| Storable votes (D72) | Superior welfare properties compared to tradable votes (D69) |
| Minimum number of voters (D79) | Increased ex ante welfare (D69) |
| Moderate polarization of preferences (D79) | Increased ex ante welfare (D69) |
| Sufficiently long time horizon (D15) | Increased ex ante welfare (D69) |