Designing referenda: An economist's pessimistic perspective

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Xiong, Siyang
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Riverside
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2020.105133
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: Referendum; social choice; dictator; implementation

摘要

Recently, a trend has developed around the world for referenda to be used to determine binary social decisions. In a couple of setups, we prove impossibility results of the following form: a binary social goal can be achieved via a referendum if and only if it is dictatorial. Hence, our results challenge the conventional wisdom in social choice theory that social decisions are permissive in two-outcome environments (May's Theorem). (C) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.