SMU SOE Online Seminar (Apr 8, 2021, 4pm-5.30pm): The Winner-Take-All Dilemma

Please click here if you are unable to view this page.

ABSTRACT This paper considers collective decision-making when individuals are partitioned into groups (e.g., states or parties) endowed with voting weights. We study a game in which each group chooses an internal rule that speciﬁes the allocation of its weight to the alternatives as a function of its members’ preferences. We show that under quite general conditions, the game is a Prisoner’s Dilemma: while the winner-take-all rule is a dominant strategy, the equilibrium is Pareto dominated. The Pareto set is fully characterized by the generalized proportional rules. We also show asymptotic Pareto dominance of the proportional rule. Our numerical computation for the US Electoral College veriﬁes the sensibility of the asymptotic results. Keywords: Representative democracy, winner-take-all rule, proportional rule. JEL Codes: C72, D70, D72. Click here to view the paper. Click here to view the CV.		This seminar will be held virtually via Zoom. A confirmation email with the Zoom details will be sent to the registered email by 7 April 2021.
		PRESENTER Yukio Koriyama Ecole Polytechnique
		RESEARCH FIELDS Political Economy Game Theory Experimental Economics
		DATE: 8 April 2021 (Thursday)
		TIME: 4.00pm - 5.30pm