This paper considers a dynamic model of Tiebout-like migration between communities that utilize distinct allocation procedures for public goods. At issue is whether voluntary or compulsory procedures are more likely to prevail over time. We model infinitely lived individuals who make repeated,...

Consider the hypothesis H that a defendant is guilty (a patient has condition C), and the evidence E that a majority of h out of n independent jurors (diagnostic tests) have voted for H and a minority of k:=n-h against H. How likely is the majority verdict to be correct? By a formula of...

We consider the endogenous choice of a voting rule, characterized by the majority size needed to elect change over the status quo, by a society who will use the rule to make future decisions. Under simple assumptions on the uncertainty concerning the future alternatives that will be voted upon,...

We develop a definition of equilibrium for agenda formation in general voting settings. The definition is independent of any protocol. We show that the set of equilibrium outcomes for any Pareto efficient voting rule is uniquely determined, and in fact coincides with that of the outcomes...

It is known that, in Condorcet’s classical model of jury decisions, the proportion of jurors supporting a decision is not a significant indicator of that decision’s reliability: the probability that a particular majority decision is correct given the size of the majority depends only on the...

For groups that must make several decisions of similar form, we define a simple and general mechanism that is designed to promote social efficiency. The mechanism links the various decisions by forcing agents to budget their representations of preferences so that the frequency of preferences...

We study option management by committee. Analysis is illustrated by tenure decisions. Our innovations are two-fold: we treat the committee's problem as one of social choice, not of information aggregation; and we endogenise the outside option: rejecting a candidate at either the probationary or...

Many local public goods are provided by coalitions and some of them have network effects. Namely, people prefer to consume a public good in a coalition with more members. This paper adopts the Drèze and Greenberg (1980) type utility function where players have preferences over goods as well as...

This paper explores the role of group heterogeneity in collective action among forest communities in northwestern Himalayas. Based on data from 54 forest communities in Himachal Pradesh, India, this paper finds that heterogeneity has at least three dimensions: wealth, social identity and...

This paper studies the Pareto-optimality of the consensual optimum established in 'Intergenerational anonymity as an alternative to the discounted-sum criterion I: consensual optimality'. For that, a Pareto- optimality criterion is set up by the application of the generalized Karush, Kuhn and...