The main criticism to the aggregation of individual preferences under majority rules refers to the possibility of reaching inconsistent collective decisions from the election process. In these cases, the collective preference includes cycles and even could prevent the election of any alternative...

We prove a general possibility result for collective decision problems where individual allocations are one-dimensional, preferences are single-peaked (strictly convex), and feasible allocation profiles cover a closed convex set. Special cases include the celebrated median voter theorem (Black...

A collective decision problem is described by a set of agents, a profile of single-peaked preferences over the real line and a number k of public facilities to be located. We consider public facilities that do not suffer from congestion and are non-excludable. We provide a characterization of...

We consider a framework where the optimal decision rule determining the collective choice depends in a simple way on the decision makers' posterior probabilities of a particular state of nature. Nevertheless, voting is generally an inefficient way to make collective choices and this paper sheds...

Voters have strong incentives to increase their influence by trading votes, a practice indeed believed to be common. But is vote trading welfare-improving or welfare-decreasing? We review the theoretical literature and, when available, its related experimental tests. We begin with the analysis...

Democratic societies have been increasingly confronted with extreme, knife-edge election outcomes that affect everybody's lives and contribute to social instability. Even if political compromises based on social conventions as equity or economic arguments as efficiency are available, polarized...

The current political situation in Sudan has deteriorated with the secession of its Southern part, the Darfur dilemma and the growing public feelings of deprivation, political disparities, elitism that possess the whole country. However, evidence proves that the situation is an accumulation of...

Can campaign communications credibly transmit information about candidates' policy intentions? To answer this question, I develop and analyze a game-theoretic model of campaign communication in a two-candidate majority rule election with multidimensional policies. Candidate and voter preferences...

In this article I analyze a model of interest group influence on legislative voting through information transmission. The model shows how interest groups may manipulate voting coalitions to their advantage by crafting different messages to target different winning coalitions. Furthermore, if...

A collective decision problem is described by a set of agents, a profile of single-peaked preferences over the real line and a number k of public facilities to be located. We consider public facilities that do not suffer from congestion and are non-excludable. We provide a characterization of...