Meritocracy, egalitarianism and the stability of majoritarian organizations

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Barbera, Salvador; Bevia, Carmen; Ponsati, Clara
• 署名单位: Autonomous University of Barcelona; Barcelona School of Economics; University of St Andrews
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2015.03.004
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 237-257
• 关键词: Egalitarianism; Meritocracy; coalition formation; hedonic games; core stability; assortative mating

摘要

Egalitarianism and meritocracy are competing principles to distribute the joint benefits of cooperation. We examine the consequences of letting members of society vote between those two principles, in a context where individuals must join with others into coalitions of a certain size to become productive. Our setup induces a hedonic game of coalition formation. We study the existence of core stable partitions (organizational structures) of this game. We show that the inability of voters to commit to one distributional rule or another is a potential source of instability. But we also prove that, when stable organizational structures exist, they may be rich in form, and different than those predicted by alternative models of coalition formation. Non-segregated coalitions may arise within core stable structures. Stability is also compatible with the coexistence of meritocratic and egalitarian coalitions. These phenomena are robust, and persist under alternative variants of our initial model. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.