When Voting Becomes Protest: Mapping Determinants of Collective Action Onto Voting Behavior

Learning While Voting: Determinants of Collective Experimentation

This paper analyzes collective decision making when individual preferences evolve through learning. Voters must take into account the effect of their votes on everyone’s learning and, hence, future preferences. The analysis is conducted in a two-arm bandit model with a safe alternative and a risky alternative whose payoff distribution, or “type”, varies across individuals and may be learned thr...

A Theory of Protest Voting

A supporter of a candidate for office may wish to restrict her power or to send her a message by casting a protest vote against her. A sufficiently large protest may convince the candidate to accept the protesters’ demands after winning the election; however, if the protest is too large then it risks causing the candidate to lose to a disliked opponent. I study a model of protest voting in whic...

The Determinants of Ethnic Voting

An Optimal Voting System When Voting is Costly∗

We consider the design of an optimal voting system when voting is costly. For a private values model with two alternatives we show the optimality of a voting system that combines three elements: (i) there is an arbitrarily chosen default decision and non-participation is interpreted as a vote in favor of the default; (ii) voting is sequential; (iii) not all voters are invited to participate in ...

An optimal voting procedure when voting is costly

We study optimal dynamic voting procedures when voting is costly. For a highly stylized speci cation of our model with private values, two alternatives, and binary, equally likely types we show the optimality of a voting procedure that combines two main elements: (i) there is an arbitrarily chosen default decision and abstention is interpreted as a vote in favor of the default; (ii) voting is s...