This paper examines how neutral the current EU decision-making procedures are to membership and how well they obey certain transparent general constitutional principles. The paper evaluates the performance of the procedures by strategic and classical power indices. The main emphasis in the...

We design an experiment to test how voters vote in a small committee election with three alternatives. Voters have common preferences that depend on an unknown state of nature. Each voter receives an imprecise private signal prior to the election and then casts a vote. The alternative with the...

Herein, we prove a Condorcet jury theorem (CJT) for large elections with multiple alternatives. Voters have common interests that depend on an unknown state of nature. Each voter receives an imprecise private signal about the state of nature and then submits one vote (simple plurality rule). We...

In this paper, we study the potential implications of a novel yet natural voting system: strategic sequential voting. Each voter has one vote and can choose when to cast his vote. After each voting period, the current count of votes is publicized enabling subsequent voters to use this...

Approval voting allows voters to support as many candidates as they wish. One advantage of the method is that voters have weak or no incentives to vote insincerely. However, the exact meaning of this statement depends on how the voters' preferences over candidates are extended to sets. We show...

The burgeoning literature on the use of sanctions to support public goods provision has largely neglected the use of formal or centralized sanctions. We let subjects playing a linear public goods game vote on the parameters of a formal sanction scheme capable both of resolving and of...

This paper takes a mechanism design approach to federalism and assumes that local preferences are the private information of local jurisdictions. Contractual federalism is defined as a strategy-proof contract among the members of the federation supervised by a benevolent but not omniscient...

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...

A group of actors, individuals or firms, can engage in collectively providing projects which may be costly or generating revenues and which may benefit some and harm others. Based on requirements of procedural fairness (Güth and Kliemt, 2013), we derive a bidding mechanism determining...

We provide an explanation for why committees may behave over-cautiously. A committee of experts makes a decision on a proposed innovation on behalf of 'society'. Each expert's signal about the innovation's quality is generated by the available evidence and the best practices of the experts'...