We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
On the Possibility of Consistent Voting Procedures.
- Authors
Dutta, Bhaskar
- Abstract
This paper is concerned with the second class of problems mentioned above. First, we show that if all individuals' sincere preferences are linear orderings, then a situation constitutes an equilibrium only if the choice set is a subset of the choice set corresponding to the sincere preference profile. This constitutes an important motivation for consistency. The result guarantees that under a wide class of consistent decision procedures, the set of outcomes corresponding to any equilibrium situation will not contain any outcome which is judged non-optimal according to the sincere preference profile. At most, some outcome which is optimal according to the sincere preference profile is now judged non-optimal. Secondly, we establish a connection between the number of alternatives in the issue, the size of winning coalitions and consistency. It turns out that acyclicity is a necessary condition for consistency. We also prove the existence of a class of consistent decision procedures. Lastly, we show that a necessary and sufficient condition for consistent voting schemes, is that individuals' sincere preferences be Value-Restricted. An example is given to show that Value-Restriction is not sufficient for the sincere-preference profile to be an equilibrium. These results establish the fact that consistency constitutes more than a formal weakening of sincere preference equilibrium. The results also suggest that consistency may be viewed as an "ethically" suitable substitute for true preference revelation.
- Subjects
ECONOMIC equilibrium; VOTING; DECISION making; ECONOMICS; SOCIAL choice; SOCIAL sciences; BUSINESS; COMMERCE
- Publication
Review of Economic Studies, 1980, Vol 47, Issue 3, p603
- ISSN
0034-6527
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/2297311