Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP5278
Authors: Alessandra Casella; Thomas R. Palfrey; Raymond Riezman
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: experiments; minorities; tyranny of the majority; voting
JEL Codes: C9; D7; H1; K19
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| storable votes (D72) | minority victories (J15) |
| storable votes (D72) | aggregate efficiency (E10) |
| minority victories (J15) | aggregate efficiency (E10) |
| storable votes (D72) | equitable distribution of outcomes (D63) |