Strategic vote trading under complete information
Date
2018ISSN
0304-4068Source
Journal of Mathematical EconomicsVolume
78Pages
52-58Google Scholar check
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
We study two-party elections considering that: (a) prior to the voting stage voters are free to trade votes for money according to the rules of the Shapley–Shubik strategic market games and (b) voters’ preferences – both ordinal rankings and cardinal intensities – arepublic information. While under plurality rule no trade occurs, under a power-sharing system (voters’ utilities are proportionally increasing in the vote share of their favorite party) full trade is always an equilibrium (two voters – the strongest supporter of each party – buy the votes of all others). Notably, this equilibrium implements proportional justice with respect to the two buyers: the ratio of the parties’ vote shares is equal to the ratio of the preference intensities of the two most opposing voters.