On the learnability of majority rule

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Salant, Yuval
• 署名单位: Stanford University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2006.03.012
• 发表日期: 2007
• 页码: 196-213
• 关键词: Social choice; learning; Majority rule; committees; tournaments; choice functions

摘要

We establish how large a sample of past decisions is required to predict future decisions of a committee with few members. The committee uses majority rule to choose between pairs of alternatives. Each member's vote is derived from a linear ordering over all the alternatives. We prove that there are cases in which an observer cannot predict precisely any decision of a committee based on its past decisions. Nonetheless, approximate prediction is possible after observing relatively few random past decisions. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.