Anything Goes in Squid Game: Sequential Voting with Informed and Uninformed Voters

Abstract

We consider a model of common-value sequential voting where voters are differentiated in their information. The intuition from the simultaneous-voting case---uninformed voters vote so as not to influence the outcome---suggests that the pivotal voter, unless being informed, would not like to end the voting. This would imply that voting takes a long time if voters are unlikely to be informed. However, we find that any voting outcome, including short voting, can arise in an equilibrium that uses consistent strategies, i.e., the informed voters follow their information. Despite such a variety of equilibria, all of them induce the same expected payoff to the voters. There also exist inconsistent-strategy equilibria that yield higher expected payoffs than under any consistent strategy profile. One of such equilibria yields the highest feasible expected payoff.

Keywords: sequential voting, common value, information aggregation, delegation

JEL Classification: C72, D72