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...

The paper considers a voting model where each voter's type is her preference. The type graph for a voter is a graph whose vertices are the possible types of the voter. Two vertices are connected by an edge in the graph if the associated types are "neighbors." A social choice function is locally...

In a voting model where the set of feasible alternatives is a subset of a product set $A = A_1\times\cdots\ldots{}A_m$ of $m$ finite categories, we characterize the set of all strategy-proof social choice functions for three different types of preference domains over $A$, namely for the domains...

Five German leading parties and their coalitions are evaluated from the viewpoint of direct democracy. For this purpose, the positions of the parties on over 30 topical issues are compared with the results of polls of public opinion. The outcomes are summarized in the indices of popularity and...

Increasing number of studies is focusing attention to constitutional analysis of European Union institutions and distribution of intra-institutional and inter-institutional influence in the European Union decision making. Most of the studies are related to distribution of voting power in the EU...

Interest groups are introduced in a spatial model of electoral competition between two political parties. We show that, by coordinating voting behavior,these interest groups increase the winning set, which is defined as the set of policy platforms for the challenger that will defeat the...

We model the decision problems faced by the members of societies whose new members are determined by vote. We adopt a number of simplifying assumptions: the founders and the candidates are fixed; the society operates for a fixed number of periods and holds elections at the beginning of each period;...

We study the interdependence of optimal tax and expenditure policies. An optimal policy requires that information on preferences is made available. We first study this problem from a general mechanism design perspective and show that efficiency is possible only if the individuals who decide on...

When making collektive desicions, principals (voters or districts) typically benefit by strategically delegating their bargaining and voting power to representatives different from themselves. There are conflicting views in the literature, however, of whether such a delegate should be...

Interest groups are introduced in a spatial model of electoral competition between two political parties. We show that, by coordinating voting behavior, these interest groups increase the winning set, which is defined as the set of policy platforms for the challenger that will defeat the...