Voting in Three-Alternative Committees: An Experiment

Autor: Johanna M.M. Goertz, Kirill Chernomaz
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2019
Předmět:
Zdroj: Games, Vol 10, Iss 2, p 20 (2019)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2073-4336
10020020
DOI: 10.3390/g10020020
Popis: We design an experiment to test how voters vote in a small committee election with three alternatives. Voters have common preferences that depend on an unknown state of nature. Each voter receives an imprecise private signal prior to the election and then casts a vote. The alternative with the most votes wins. We fix the number of voters in our experiment to be five and focus on differences in the information structure (prior and signal distributions). We test three different treatments (different prior and signal distributions) that pose different challenges for the voters. In one, simply voting for one’s signal is an equilibrium. In the other two, it is not. Despite the different levels of complexity for the voters, they come relatively close to the predicted strategies (that sometimes involve mixing). As a consequence, the efficiency of the decision is also relatively high and comes close to predicted levels. In one variation of the experiment, we calculate posterior beliefs for the subjects and post them. In another, we do not. Interestingly, the important findings do not change.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals
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