Arbeitspapier

Information Aggregation in Democratic Mechanisms

We examine whether and how democratic procedures can achieve socially desirable public good provision in the presence of profound uncertainty about the benefits of public goods, i.e., when citizens are able to identify the distribution of benefits only if they aggregate their private information. Some members of the society, however, are harmed by socially desirable policies and aim at manipulating information aggregation by misrepresenting their private information. We show that information can be aggregated and a socially desirable policy can be implemented under a new class of democratic mechanisms involving a sample group. These mechanisms reflect the principles of liberal democracy, are procedurally efficient, and involve a conditional tax privilege of sample group members. This tax treatment motivates sample group members to reveal their private information truthfully before voting takes place. Depending on the distance between two feasible public good levels, the optimal mechanism involves either one or two voting rounds. We show that procedural efficiency cannot be achieved by communication among all citizens prior to voting. Finally, we outline several applications of the mechanism.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 5815

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Externalities
Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
Publicly Provided Goods: General
Thema
democratic mechanisms
polling
sampling
public goods
voting
information aggregation

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Britz, Volker
Gersbach, Hans
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
(wo)
Munich
(wann)
2016

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:44 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Britz, Volker
  • Gersbach, Hans
  • Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)

Entstanden

  • 2016

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