We develop a theoretical framework for equity in council voting games (CVGs). In a CVG, a fully representative voting body delegates decision-making to a subset of the members, as describes, e.g., the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Three equity concepts are proposed: ex-ante...

Experiments evaluate the fit of human behaviour to the Shapley-Shubik power index (SSPI), a formula of voter power. Groups of six subjects with differing votes divide a fixed purse by majority rule in online chat rooms. Earnings proxy for measured power. Chat rooms and processes for selecting...

Twenty years of negotiations over reform of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) are yet to bear fruit. We use recent advances in the theory of a-priori voting power to present a formal quantitative appraisal of the structural reforms contained within eleven current reform proposals, and...

Fundamentalist organizations and the terrorists they spawn do not arise of a vacuum. Combating terrorism requires understanding the principles of groups’ formation, development and growth. We use economic theory to explain the creation and development of fundamentalist groups. In this paper we...

In this paper we develop a theory of “Kosher Wars” under which Rabbis (certifying authorities) compete to enhance the level of Jewish observation of their congregations. The level of observance can be seen as the Rabbi’s rents. Our rent-seeking model explains the establishment...

The persistence literature in economics and related disciplines connects recent outcomes to events long ago. This influential literature marks a promising development but has drawn criticism. We discuss two prominent examples that ground the rise of the Nazi Party in distant historical roots....

The monetary policy of the European Central Bank (ECB) is the subject matter of this paper. We analyze the prospects for future price stability in an enlarged European Monetary and Economic Union (EMU). At the heart of this study are the potential effects of altering decision-making procedure...

Players in a committee, council, or electoral college often wield asymmetric numbers of votes. Binary decision environments are then conventionally modeled as weighted voting games. We introduce weighted committee games in order to describe decisions on three or more alternatives in similarly...

We present a model of bargaining in which a committee searches over the policy space, successively amending the default by voting over proposals. Bargaining ends when proposers are unable or unwilling to amend the existing default, which is then implemented. Our main goal is to study the...

Some committees convene behind closed doors while others publicly discuss issues and make their decisions. This paper studies the role of open and closed committee decision making in presence of external influence. We show that restricting the information of interest groups may reduce the bias...