We explore the possibility of axiomatic characterization of approval voting when the set of voters is fixed and each voter has a dichotomous preference over the alternatives. We first prove that if the set of alternatives is variable, a social choice rule is approval voting if and only if it...

Collective-choice rules aggregate individual choices into a group choice. This study addresses the role of collective-choice rules in a social dilemma situation in which group members can repeatedly choose a combination of institutions to achieve self-governance. Specifically, we investigate...

The nonasymptotic Condorcet jury theorem states that, under certain conditions, group decision-making by simple majority voting can decide more efficiently than single-person decision-making, in terms of having a higher probability of choosing the better alternative. Wit (1998) showed that the...

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...

We determine the scoring rule that is most likely to select a high-ability candidate. A major result is that neither the widely used plurality rule nor the inverse-plurality rule are ever optimal, and that the Borda rule is hardly ever optimal. Furthermore, we show that only the...

We determine the scoring rule that is most likely to select a high-ability candidate. A major result is that neither the widely used plurality rule nor the inverse-plurality rule are ever optimal, and that the Borda rule is hardly ever optimal. Furthermore, we show that only the...

We say that a preference profile exhibits pairwise consensus around some fixed preference relation, if whenever a preference relation is closer to it than another one, the distance of the profile to the former is not greater than its distance to the latter. We say that a social choice rule...

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...