Minorities and Storable Votes

Columbia University Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series No. 0506-02

51 Pages Posted: 8 Sep 2009

See all articles by Alessandra Casella

Alessandra Casella

Columbia University - Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Department of Economics; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Thomas R. Palfrey

California Institute of Technology - Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences

Raymond G. Riezman

Aarhus University - Department of Economics and Business Economics; University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) - Department of Economics; University of Iowa - Henry B. Tippie College of Business - Department of Economics; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute); GEP; Aarhus University - School of Business and Social Sciences

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Date Written: August 1, 2005

Abstract

The paper studies a simple voting system that has the potential to increase the power of minorities without sacrificing aggregate efficiency. Storable votes grant each voter a stock of votes to spend as desired over a series of binary decisions. By accumulating votes on issues that it deems most important, the minority can win occasionally. But because the majority typically can outvote it, the minority wins only if its strength of preference is high and the majority's strength of preference is low. The result is that with storable votes, aggregate efficiency either falls little or in fact rises. The theoretical predictions of our model are confirmed by a series of experiments: the frequency of minority victories, the relative payoff of the minority versus the majority, and the aggregate payoffs all match the theory.

Suggested Citation

Casella, Alessandra and Palfrey, Thomas R. and Riezman, Raymond G., Minorities and Storable Votes (August 1, 2005). Columbia University Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series No. 0506-02, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1082562 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1082562

Alessandra Casella (Contact Author)

Columbia University - Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Department of Economics ( email )

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Aarhus University - Department of Economics and Business Economics ( email )

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University of Iowa - Henry B. Tippie College of Business - Department of Economics ( email )

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