Information Aggregation with Sequential Voting

Abstract

When truth-seeking agents take turns and vote sequentially on a binary issue (e.g. support a reform, oppose it, or abstain), they can base their decisions both on their private information and on the actions taken by others before them. As we show, this allows the group not only to aggregate information more effectively than if votes were cast simultaneously, but, perhaps surprisingly, to achieve the highest possible efficiency level (i.e. to reach full information equivalence) even when voters differ in the precision of the information they possess.

Keywords: information aggregation, sequential voting, Condorcet jury theorem, abstention

JEL Classification: D71, D72