Democracy Undone. Systematic Minority Advantage in Competitive Vote Markets / Alessandra Casella, Sébastien Turban.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Casella, Alessandra.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Turban, Sébastien.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w18573.

NBER working paper series no. w18573

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2012.

Summary:

We study the competitive equilibrium of a market for votes where voters can trade votes for a numeraire before making a decision via majority rule. The choice is binary and the number of supporters of either alternative is known. We identify a sufficient condition guaranteeing the existence of an ex ante equilibrium. In equilibrium, only the most intense voter on each side demands votes and each demands enough votes to alone control a majority. The probability of a minority victory is independent of the size of the minority and converges to one half, for any minority size, when the electorate is arbitrarily large. In a large electorate, the numerical advantage of the majority becomes irrelevant: democracy is undone by the market.

Notes:

Print version record

November 2012.