Tailored Bayesian Mechanisms: Experimental Evidence from Two-Stage Voting Games

Abstract

Optimal voting rules have to be tailored to the underlying distribution of preferences. This paper shows that the introduction of a stage at which agents may themselves choose voting rules according to which they decide in a second stage may increase the sum of individuals’ payoffs if players are not all completely selfish. Our experiments aim to understand how privately informed individuals choose voting rules and vote given these rules. In a setting with an asymmetric distribution of valuations groups that can choose a voting rule do better than those who decide with a given simple majority voting rule.

Keywords: two-stage voting, Bayesian voting, experiments

JEL Classification: C910, D700, D820