Committee machine that votes for similarity between materials

Committee Decision with Multiple Votes∗

Under what circumstances can a static voting mechanism aggregate dispersed information of committee members? I argue that whenever the voters are able to cast multiple votes, the quality of the joint decision increases. However, voting mechanisms are intrinsically additive ways of aggregating private information. This, naturally, is not a binding constraint if the private information is conditi...

Machine Cell Formation Based on a New Similarity Coefficient

One of the designs of cellular manufacturing systems (CMS) requires that a machine population be partitioned into machine cells. Numerous methods are available for clustering machines into machine cells. One method involves using a similarity coefficient. Similarity coefficients between machines are not absolute, and they still need more attention from researchers. Although there are a number o...

Trading Votes for Votes . ∗ A Decentralized Matching

We study vote trading—trading of votes for votes—through the tools of the matching literature. Decentralized vote trading is modeled via an algorithm that executes a sequence of binding, myopic, strictly improving pair-wise trades. We show that with binary alternatives, an odd number of voters, and separable preferences, the sequence always converges to a stable vote allocation—a distribution o...

Trading Votes for Votes: An Experimental Study∗

Trading votes for votes is believed to be ubiquitous in committees and legislatures, and yet we know very little of its properties. We return to this old question with a laboratory experiment and a simple theoretical framework. We posit a family of minimally rational trading rules such that pairs of voters can exchange votes when mutually advantageous. Such rules always lead to stable vote allo...

A Bayesian Committee Machine