Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/171513 
Year of Publication: 
2007
Series/Report no.: 
Economics Working Paper Series No. 07/70
Publisher: 
ETH Zurich, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research, Zurich
Abstract: 
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 where the first-period project may have a 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 keep the voting right 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.
Subjects: 
voting
minority
durable decision
risk aversion
tyranny of majority rules
JEL: 
D7
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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