Content-Based Agendas and Qualified Majorities in Sequential Voting

2017 ◽  
Vol 107 (6) ◽  
pp. 1477-1506 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Kleiner ◽  
Benny Moldovanu
Keyword(s):  
Condorcet Winner ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Perfect Equilibrium ◽  
Equilibrium Outcome ◽  
Ex Post ◽  
Practical Design ◽  
Finite Set ◽  
Sequential Voting ◽  
Sincere Voting ◽  
Strategic Skills

We analyze sequential, binary voting schemes in settings where several privately informed agents have single-peaked preferences over a finite set of alternatives, and we focus on robust equilibria that do not depend on assumptions about the players' beliefs about each other. Our main results identify two intuitive conditions on binary voting trees, ensuring that sincere voting at each stage forms an ex post perfect equilibrium. In particular, we uncover a strong rationale for content-based agendas: if the outcome should not be sensitive to beliefs about others, nor to the deployment of strategic skills, the agenda needs to be built “from the extremes to the middle” so that more extreme alternatives are both more difficult to adopt, and are put to vote before other, more moderate options. An important corollary is that, under simple majority, the equilibrium outcome of the incomplete information game is always the Condorcet winner. Finally, we aim to guide the practical design of schemes that are widely used by legislatures and committees and we illustrate our findings with several case studies. (JEL D71, D72, I10, J16, J32, K10)

Navigating on the Information Highway

1994 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 271-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnold M. Lund
Keyword(s):  
Design Issues ◽  
Information Highway ◽  
Human Interface ◽  
Practical Design ◽  
Finite Set ◽  
Critical Problems ◽  
The Right ◽  
Time Frames ◽  
Theoretical Issues ◽  
Design Guidance

The “information highway” is being created now, and the design task is monumental. Some of the most critical problems in designing a navigation environment have never been addressed before, and developers are demanding that either we (as human interface designers) supply answers now or they will make up their own answers. There is too little time and there are too few resources to fully explore interesting theoretical issues, and yet the results of such exploration (if on the right topics) could be critically important. This paper will review some of the practical design issues that Ameritech has identified as being important in defining a navigation environment, and approaches we have taken to those design issues. These approaches have been shaped by a lack of design guidance in some areas, and a finite set of resources (especially time). The paper will also identify directions where research would be useful, and time frames during which the results will still be valuable.

The Game of Voting

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Balinski ◽  
Rida Laraki
Keyword(s):  
Condorcet Winner ◽  
Election Outcome ◽  
Equilibrium Outcome ◽  
Grade Distribution ◽  
Best Response ◽  
Strong Equilibria ◽  
Majority Judgment ◽  
Best Response Correspondence

This chapter compares majority judgment mechanism to other methods, including first-past-the-post and Borda’s method, among others, in the context of the game of voting. The concept of utilities, which depends on grade distribution of the electorate, is extended to election output. When the identity of the election winner is dependent on the utilities of voters, Condorcet-winner is elected by a large number of strong-equilibria strategy-profiles. The chapter explores best-response correspondence, according to which, if the number of possible equilibria is very small and sometimes unique, the Condorcet-winner emerges as the unique, possible equilibrium outcome and honest votes determine the election outcome.

scholarly journals Simultaneous and sequential voting under general decision rules

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 477-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Friedel Bolle
Keyword(s):  
Pure Strategy ◽  
Decision Rules ◽  
Subgame Perfect Equilibrium ◽  
Equal Weight ◽  
Perfect Equilibrium ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
General Rules ◽  
The Us ◽  
Sequential Voting ◽  
Us Senate

In an economic theory of voting, voters have positive or negative costs of voting in favor of a proposal and positive or negative benefits from an accepted proposal. When votes have equal weight then simultaneous voting mostly has a unique pure strategy Nash equilibrium which is independent of benefits. Voting with respect to (arbitrarily small) costs alone, however, often results in voting against the ‘true majority’ . If voting is sequential as in the roll call votes of the US Senate then, in the unique subgame perfect equilibrium, the ‘true majority’ prevails. It is shown that the result for sequential voting holds also with different weights of voters (shareholders), with multiple necessary majorities (European Union decision-making), or even more general rules. Simultaneous voting in the general model has more differentiated results.

scholarly journals An Efficient Ascending-Bid Auction for Multiple Objects: Comment

2018 ◽  
Vol 108 (2) ◽  
pp. 555-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noriaki Okamoto
Keyword(s):  
Perfect Equilibrium ◽  
Multiple Objects ◽  
Vickrey Auction ◽  
Ex Post ◽  
Private Values ◽  
Ausubel Auction

Ausubel (2004) introduces a new ascending-bid auction rule for multiple homogeneous objects, called the Ausubel auction, which is a dynamic counterpart of the Vickrey auction. He claims that in the Ausubel auction with private values, sincere bidding by all bidders is an ex post perfect equilibrium. However, we show that this claim does not hold in general by providing a counterexample. We then modify the Ausubel auction so that sincere bidding by all bidders is an ex post perfect equilibrium. (JEL D44)

Self-enforcing Agreements and Forward Induction Reasoning

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emiliano Catonini
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Games ◽  
Subgame Perfect Equilibrium ◽  
The Self ◽  
Perfect Equilibrium ◽  
Forward Induction ◽  
Equilibrium Outcome ◽  
Equilibrium Refinements ◽  
Binding Agreement

Abstract In dynamic games, players may observe a deviation from a pre-play, possibly incomplete, non-binding agreement before the game is over. The attempt to rationalize the deviation may lead players to revise their beliefs about the deviator’s behaviour in the continuation of the game. This instance of forward induction reasoning is based on interactive beliefs about not just rationality, but also the compliance with the agreement itself. I study the effects of such rationalization on the self-enforceability of the agreement. Accordingly, outcomes of the game are deemed implementable by some agreement or not. Conclusions depart substantially from what the traditional equilibrium refinements suggest. A non-subgame perfect equilibrium outcome may be induced by a self-enforcing agreement, while a subgame perfect equilibrium outcome may not. The incompleteness of the agreement can be crucial to implement an outcome.

Rejoinder to Shubik's “Comment”

1971 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 1146-1146
Author(s):  
Peter C. Ordeshook
Keyword(s):  
Competitive Equilibrium ◽  
Pure Strategy ◽  
Majority Voting ◽  
Noncooperative Game ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Ex Post ◽  
Social Decisions ◽  
Electoral Strategies ◽  
Ex Ante ◽  
Pareto Efficient

First, Shubik's comment distinguishes between ex ante and ex post judgments about markets and elections. He claims that given his assumptions, both markets and elections are efficient ex post, though elections may not be efficient ex ante. I agree insofar as in my last paragraph I state, “If … we ask … ‘For some forthcoming sequence of one or more social decisions, do citizens prefer elections to markets?’ our answer is ‘Possibly no.’”But Shubik's essay contains no distinction between ex ante and ex post judgments. Shubik begins, “it is demonstrated that if all the conditions for the existence of a competitive equilibrium are satisfied, then simple majority voting to determine the distribution of goods may be less efficient than a price system” (page 179). Shubik notes later, “if they [voters] are riskneutral or risk-averse, then, whenever the ‘political noncooperative game’ has no pure strategy solution, the result will not be Pareto optimal” (page 180). These two statements indicate that Shubik's judgment is ex post and not ex ante, and ex post he is wrong.Second, to complicate matters further, Shubik fails to distinguish correctly between mixed and risky strategies by the dictates of these concepts' theoretical definitions. I show that if these concepts are correctly interpreted, then a Pareto efficient allocation occurs no matter what form the candidates' electoral strategies take. Manifestly, an ex ante comparison of markets and elections by the Pareto efficient criterion is meaningless, as ex post they are both Pareto efficient.

scholarly journals Position Auctions with Budgets: Existence and Uniqueness

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Itai Ashlagi ◽  
Mark Braverman ◽  
Avinatan Hassidim ◽  
Ron Lavi ◽  
Moshe Tennenholtz
Keyword(s):  
Existence And Uniqueness ◽  
Uniqueness Result ◽  
Budget Constraints ◽  
Equilibrium Outcome ◽  
English Auction ◽  
Ex Post ◽  
Private Values ◽  
Pareto Efficient ◽  
Position Auctions

We design a Generalized Position Auction for players with private values and private budget constraints. Our mechanism is a careful modification of the Generalized English Auction of Edelman, Ostrovsky and Schwarz (2007). By enabling multiple price trajectories that ascent concurrently we are able to retrieve all the desired properties of the Generalized English Auction, that was not originally designed for players with budgets. In particular, the ex-post equilibrium outcome of our auction is Pareto-efficient and envy-free. Moreover, we show that any other position auction that satisfies these properties and does not make positive transfers must obtain in ex-post equilibrium the same outcome of our mechanism, for every tuple of distinct types. This uniqueness result holds even if the players' values are fixed and known to the seller, and only the budgets are private.

scholarly journals Negotiation Strategies for Agents with Ordinal Preferences

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sefi Erlich ◽  
Noam Hazon ◽  
Sarit Kraus
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Preference Order ◽  
Full Information ◽  
Perfect Equilibrium ◽  
Bilateral Negotiation ◽  
Negotiation Strategies ◽  
Negotiation Protocol ◽  
Ordinal Preferences ◽  
Finite Set ◽  
Negotiation Protocols

Negotiation is a very common interaction between automated agents. Many common negotiation protocols work with cardinal utilities, even though ordinal preferences, which only rank the outcomes, are easier to elicit from humans. In this work we concentrate on negotiation with ordinal preferences over a finite set of outcomes. We study an intuitive protocol for bilateral negotiation, where the two parties make offers alternately. We analyze the negotiation protocol under different settings. First, we assume that each party has full information about the other party's preference order. We provide elegant strategies that specify a sub-game perfect equilibrium for the agents. We further show how the studied negotiation protocol almost completely implements a known bargaining rule. Finally, we analyze the no information setting. We study several solution concepts that are distribution-free, and analyze both the case where neither party knows the preference order of the other party, and the case where only one party is uninformed.

scholarly journals Voting behavior under outside pressure: promoting true majorities with sequential voting?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Friedel Bolle ◽  
Philipp E. Otto
Keyword(s):  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Subgame Perfect Equilibrium ◽  
Complete Information ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Equilibrium Strategy ◽  
Perfect Equilibrium ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Sequential Voting ◽  
Subgame Perfect Equilibria ◽  
Perfect Equilibria

AbstractWhen including outside pressure on voters as individual costs, sequential voting (as in roll call votes) is theoretically preferable to simultaneous voting (as in recorded ballots). Under complete information, sequential voting has a unique subgame perfect equilibrium with a simple equilibrium strategy guaranteeing true majority results. Simultaneous voting suffers from a plethora of equilibria, often contradicting true majorities. Experimental results, however, show severe deviations from the equilibrium strategy in sequential voting with not significantly more true majority results than in simultaneous voting. Social considerations under sequential voting—based on emotional reactions toward the behaviors of the previous players—seem to distort subgame perfect equilibria.

Theoretical And Practical Design Considerations for Ultra-High Resolution Electron Lenses

1980 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 266-269
Author(s):  
Y. Harada ◽  
K. Tsuno ◽  
Y. Arai
Keyword(s):  
Optical Properties ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Chromatic Aberration ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Pole Piece ◽  
Axial Field ◽  
Design Considerations ◽  
Resolution Electron ◽  
Practical Design ◽  
Peak Flux

Magnetic objective lenses, from the point of view of pole piece geometry, can he roughly classified into two types, viz., symmetrical and asymmetrical. In the case of the former, the optical properties have been calculated by several authors1-3) and the results would appear to suggest that, in order to reduce the spherical and chromatic aberration coefficients, Cs and Cc, it is necessary to decrease the half-width value of the axial field distribution and to increase the peak flux density. The expressions for either minimum Cs or minimum Cc were presented in the form of ‘universal’ curves by Mulvey and Wallington4).

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