Daniel Berend

Senior Academic

Effectiveness of weighted majority rules with random decision power distribution

Daniel Berend, Yuri Chernyavsky

There is a large body of research studying the conditions under which majority decisions are best. In particular, in many circumstances, the probability of a group to decide correctly is higher than that of a random subgroup. Moreover, the latter probability increases as the subgroup size grows. Here we generalize those results by showing that, in the same setup, the simple majority rule is the most effective of all weighted majority rules when weights are distributed randomly between group members. For special families of weighted majority rules, rule effectiveness increases as we get "closer" to the simple majority rule.

Publication language English
Pages 423-439
Journal Journal of Public Economic Theory
Volume 10
Issue number 3
Publication status Published - 01.01.2008

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Sociology and Political Science
Finance
Economics and Econometrics