Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/22827
Year of Publication: 
2002
Series/Report no.: 
Bonn Econ Discussion Papers No. 17/2002
Publisher: 
University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE), Bonn
Abstract: 
Why do political constituencies delegate decision power to representative assemblies? And how is the size of such assemblies determined? We analyze these questions of constitutional design in a model with voters learning their preferred alternative only after engaging in costly information gathering. We show that there is an optimal assembly size that would be chosen at a constitutional stage. This implies a relationship between assembly and constituency size. We then compared this relationship to actual data. Fitting a single parameter to the data, we show that our model can explain the actual relationship between assembly and constituency size quite well.
Subjects: 
Constitutional Design
Representative Democracy
Parliament Size
Information Costs
JEL: 
D72
P16
D82
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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