Optimal Voting Rules

Alex Gershkov; Benny Moldovanu; Xianwen Shi

doi:10.1093/restud/rdw044

Optimal Voting Rules

Alex Gershkov, Benny Moldovanu, Xianwen Shi

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

29 Scopus citations

Abstract

We derive the incentive compatible and ex-ante welfare maximizing (i.e. utilitarian) mechanism for settings with an arbitrary number of agents and alternatives where the privately informed agents have single-crossing and single-peaked preferences. The optimal outcome can be implemented by modifying a sequential voting scheme that is used in many legislatures and committees. The modification uses a flexible majority threshold for each of several alternatives, and allows us to replicate, via a single sequential procedure, the entire class of anonymous, unanimous, and dominant strategy incentive compatible mechanisms. Our analysis relies on elegant characterizations of this class of mechanisms for single-peaked and single-crossing preferences.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	688-717
Number of pages	30
Journal	Review of Economic Studies
Volume	84
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1093/restud/rdw044
State	Published - 2017
Externally published	Yes

Funding

Funders	Funder number
Maurice Falk Institute for Economic Research
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
European Research Council
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development
Israel Science Foundation

Keywords

Dominant strategy implementation
Generalized median
Sequential voting
Single-crossing preferences

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10.1093/restud/rdw044

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AB - We derive the incentive compatible and ex-ante welfare maximizing (i.e. utilitarian) mechanism for settings with an arbitrary number of agents and alternatives where the privately informed agents have single-crossing and single-peaked preferences. The optimal outcome can be implemented by modifying a sequential voting scheme that is used in many legislatures and committees. The modification uses a flexible majority threshold for each of several alternatives, and allows us to replicate, via a single sequential procedure, the entire class of anonymous, unanimous, and dominant strategy incentive compatible mechanisms. Our analysis relies on elegant characterizations of this class of mechanisms for single-peaked and single-crossing preferences.

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Optimal Voting Rules

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