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Three essays in collective decision making
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Florence : European University Institute, 2013
EUI; ECO; PhD Thesis
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HUGHES, Niall, Three essays in collective decision making, Florence : European University Institute, 2013, EUI, ECO, PhD Thesis - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/29608
Abstract
This thesis is a collection of three essays on voting as a means of collective decision- making. The first chapter builds a model of how voters should optimally behave in a legislative election with three parties under plurality rule. I show that, in contrast to single district elections, properties such as polarisation and misaligned voting can be mitigated in legislative elections. The second chapter studies a model of committee decision making where members have career concerns and a principal can choose the level of transparency (how much of the committees decision he can observe). We show that increased transparency leads to a breakdown in information aggregation, but that this may actually increase the principal’s payoff. The theoretical model is then tested in a laboratory experiment. The final chapter introduces a model of legislative bargaining where three parties in the legislature bargain over the formation of government by choosing a policy and a distribution of government perks. I show that when individual politicians are responsible for the policies they implement - that is, those outside of government are not held accountable by voters for the implemented governments policies, while each individual politician in the ruling coalition is - then a given seat distribution can result in almost any two party coalition.
Table of Contents
-- Voting in legislative elections under plurality rule
-- How transparency kills information aggregation (and why that may be good)
-- Legislative bargaining with accountability
Additional Information
Defence date: 22 November 2013