Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/156683 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
Discussion Paper No. 394
Publisher: 
European University Viadrina, Department of Business Administration and Economics, Frankfurt (Oder)
Abstract: 
In an economic theory of voting, voters have positive or negative costs of voting in favor of a proposal and positive or negative benefits from an accepted proposal. When votes have equal weight then simultaneous voting mostly has a unique pure strategy Nash equilibrium which is independent of benefits. Voting with respect to (arbitrarily small) costs alone, however, often results in voting against the "true majority". If voting is sequential as in the roll call votes of the US Senate then, in the unique subgame perfect equilibrium, the "true majority" prevails (Groseclose and Milyo, 2010, 2013). In this paper, it is shown that the result for sequential voting holds also with different weights of voters (shareholders) or with multiple necessary majorities (EU decision making). Simultaneous voting in the general model can be plagued by non-existent or non-unique pure strategy equilibria under most preference constellations.
Subjects: 
voting
free riding
binary decisions
unique equilibria
JEL: 
H41
D71
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
340.81 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.