Suchergebnisse

AbstractWe introduce semi-flexible majority rules for public good provision with private valuations. Such rules take the form of a two-stage, multiple-round voting mechanism where the output of the first stage is the default alternative for the second stage and the vote-share thresholds used in every round of binary voting (a) vary with the alternative on the table for a public-good level and (b) require a qualified majority for approving the alternative on the table by stopping the procedure. We show that these mechanisms implement the ex post utilitarian optimal public-good level, provided valuations can only be high or low. This public-good level is chosen after all potential socially optimal alternatives have been picked for a voting round. We explore ways to reduce the number of voting rounds and develop a compound mechanism when there are three or more valuation types.

We study the feasibility and efficiency of policy reforms in polarized democracies. We develop a simple election model where (i) reforms are costly for voters and politicians and these costs increase with the extent of policy change, and (ii) politicians differ in their ability to carry out reforms efficiently. We identify a so-called Reform Dilemma, which manifests itself in two variants. From a static perspective, low-reform-ability politicians may be elected, who impose high costs on citizens for each reform step. From a dynamic perspective, incumbents may choose socially undesirable policies to align the social need for reform with their own reform ability and are thus re-elected regardless of their reform ability. In general, both manifestations of the Reform Dilemma are more pronounced when political parties' positions are polarized. Furthermore, the existence of the Reform Dilemma is independent of the exact point in time when the abilities of candidates reveal themselves and become common knowledge.

We introduce a four-stage, multi-price buying mechanism which can be used by a (big) buyer to separate low-quality sellers – called "lemon" owners – from high-quality sellers – called "peach" owners. With a partition of sellers into several groups, the buyer obtains the commodities from a desired number of "peach" owners at a price that matches their willingness to sell. For their part, "lemon" owners are trapped into selling their items at a low, or even negligible, price. We discuss several variants of this mechanism – generically called a Devil's Menu – and show how the degree of surplus extraction by the buyer is related to the number of prices used and to the extent to which items can be bought sequentially. The common feature of all the variants is that they allow the buyer to neglect those partition groups with the highest number of false claims made by sellers who own lemons. This, in turn, yields equilibria in which no false claims are made. Our results are robust for several extensions of our baseline setup. Finally, we offer applications of our insights for market regulators, political interest groups, and decoy ballots. ; ISSN:0165-4896