Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/243112 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 395
Publisher: 
University of Zurich, Department of Economics, Zurich
Abstract: 
We investigate how individuals think groups should aggregate members' ordinal preferences - that is, how they interpret "the will of the people." In an experiment, we elicit revealed attitudes toward ordinal preference aggregation and classify subjects according to the rules they apparently deploy. Majoritarianism is rare. Instead, people employ rules that place greater weight on compromise options. The classification's fit is excellent, and clustering analysis reveals that it does not omit important rules. We ask whether rules are stable across domains, whether people impute cardinal utility from ordinal ranks, and whether attitudes toward aggregation differ across countries with divergent traditions.
Subjects: 
Experiment
welfare economics
social choice
Borda
Condorcet
JEL: 
C91
D71
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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