Minority voting and long-term decisions

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Fahrenberger, Theresa; Gersbach, Hans
• 署名单位: Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain; ETH Zurich
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2009.10.008
• 发表日期: 2010
• 页码: 329-345
• 关键词: Voting; minority; Durable decision; risk aversion; Tyranny of majority rules

摘要

In this paper we propose minority voting as a scheme that can partially protect individuals from the risk of repeated exploitation. We consider a committee that meets twice to decide about projects including a first-period project that may have long-lasting impact. In the first period, a simple open majority voting scheme takes place. Voting splits the committee into three groups: voting winners, voting losers, and absentees. Under minority voting, only voting losers retain their voting rights in the second period. We show that as soon as absolute risk aversion exceeds a threshold value, minority voting is superior to repeated application of the simple majority rule. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.