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Information aggregation in democratic mechanisms

Britz, Volker; Gersbach, Hans - 2016 - This version: January 22, 2016

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. …

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011444451

Volatility and resilience of democratic public-good provision

Gersbach, Hans; Pitsuwan, Fikri; Bolgè, Giovanni Valvassori - 2024

We examine democratic public-good provision with heterogeneous legislators. Decisions are taken by majority rule and an agenda-setter proposes a level of the public good, taxes, and subsidies. Members are heterogeneous with respect to their benefits from the public good. We find that, depending...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014500614

A better cycle-breaker for Swiss democracy?

Gersbach, Hans; Cadado Noguerales, Rodrigo; Schenk, Samuel - 2024

invites strategic voting, as exemplified by the 2010 case of the “Ausschaffungsinitiative”. We suggest to break cycles … alternative strong equilibria with strategic voting is the same as if everybody votes sincerely. We also show that other common …

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10015045176

On pendular voting

Gersbach, Hans - 2025

"Pendular Voting" presents a novel two-stage voting procedure: A randomly chosen citizen group votes on a proposal … (majority voting), the counterproposal being the default outcome in case of cyclical collective preferences. We analyze the … in the first stage, without impacting the final outcome. Pendular Voting can engineer outcomes closer to the median voter …

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10015359046

New forms of democracy

Gersbach, Hans - 2022

In the third decade of the 21st century, digitization, global events, challenges from authoritarian states, and difficulties of particular democracies to function properly confront democracy with a new series of challenges and opportunities that will force it to reinvent itself. The last decades...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013465693

Democratic provision of divisible public goods

Gersbach, Hans - 2010

In this paper we examine the potential of democratic constitutions for the provision of divisible public goods in a large economy. Our main insights are as follows: When aggregate shocks are absent, the combination of the following rules yields first-best allocations: a supermajority rule, equal...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10003937264

Reelection threshold contracts in politics

Gersbach, Hans; Liessem, Verena - 2001

When politicians are provided with insufficient incentives by the democratic election mechanism, we show that social welfare can be improved by threshold contracts. A threshold incentive contract stipulates a performance level which a politican must reach in order to have the right to stand for...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011408440

Fiscal constitutions

Gersbach, Hans - 1999

In this paper we examine how individuals should be treated with respect to taxes, subsidies and agenda setting in constitutions in order to obtain efficient allocations of public goods and to limit tax distortions. We show that if public goods are socially desirable, the simple majority rule as...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009781718