Storable Votes

47 Pages Posted: 27 Sep 2002

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)

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: August 2002

Abstract

Motivated by the need for more flexible decision-making mechanisms in the European Union, the paper proposes a simple but novel voting scheme for binary decisions taken by committees that meet regularly over time. At each meeting, committee members are allowed to store their vote for future use; the decision is then taken according to the majority of votes cast. The possibility of shifting votes intertemporally allows agents to concentrate their votes when preferences are more intense, and although the scheme will not in general achieve full efficiency, making votes storable typically leads to ex ante welfare gains. The analysis in the paper suggests that the result will hold if one of the following conditions is satisfied: (i) the number of voters is above a minimum threshold; (ii) preferences are not too polarized; (iii) the horizon is long enough.

Keywords: Voting, committees, European Union

JEL Classification: C73, D72

Suggested Citation

Casella, Alessandra, Storable Votes (August 2002). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=334522

Alessandra Casella (Contact Author)

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

420 W. 118th Street
New York, NY 10027
United States
212-854-2459 (Phone)
212-854-8059 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.columbia.edu/~ac186/

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

London
United Kingdom

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
22
Abstract Views
1,176
PlumX Metrics