When costly voting is beneficial

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Chakravarty, Surajeet; Kaplan, Todd R.; Myles, Gareth
• 署名单位: University of Exeter; University of Haifa; University of Adelaide
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2018.08.013
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 33-42
• 关键词: Costly voting; externalities

摘要

We present a costly voting model in which each voter has a private valuation for their preferred outcome of a vote. When there is a zero cost to voting, all voters vote and hence all values are counted equally regardless of how high they may be. By having a cost to voting, only those with high enough values would choose to incur this cost. We show that, by adding this cost, welfare may be enhanced even when the cost of voting is wasteful. Such an effect occurs when there is both a large enough density of voters with low values and the expected value of voters is high enough. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.