IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jetheo/v198y2021ics002205312100171x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

When voters like to be right: An analysis of the Condorcet Jury Theorem with mixed motives

Author

Listed:
  • Midjord, Rune
  • Rodríguez Barraquer, Tomás
  • Valasek, Justin

Abstract

We study the aggregation of private information through voting in committees where agents are rewarded based on both the correctness of the committee decision (instrumental payoffs) and the correctness of their vote (expressive payoffs). Surprisingly, we find that even when expressive payoffs are perfectly aligned with instrumental payoffs, expressive payoffs can prevent committees from aggregating private information, suggesting that committees will make better decisions if agents are not held individually responsible for the correctness of their vote. We show that this finding holds in situations with heterogeneous expressive payoffs and reputation payoffs that depend on the aggregate profile of votes.

Suggested Citation

  • Midjord, Rune & Rodríguez Barraquer, Tomás & Valasek, Justin, 2021. "When voters like to be right: An analysis of the Condorcet Jury Theorem with mixed motives," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:198:y:2021:i:c:s002205312100171x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2021.105354
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002205312100171X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jet.2021.105354?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gilat Levy, 2007. "Decision Making in Committees: Transparency, Reputation, and Voting Rules," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 150-168, March.
    2. Feddersen, Timothy & Gailmard, Sean & Sandroni, Alvaro, 2009. "Moral Bias in Large Elections: Theory and Experimental Evidence," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 103(2), pages 175-192, May.
    3. Bauke Visser & Otto H. Swank, 2007. "On Committees of Experts," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 122(1), pages 337-372.
    4. Timothy Feddersen & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 1997. "Voting Behavior and Information Aggregation in Elections with Private Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(5), pages 1029-1058, September.
    5. Sebastian Fehrler & Niall Hughes, 2018. "How Transparency Kills Information Aggregation: Theory and Experiment," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 181-209, February.
    6. Mandler, Michael, 2012. "The fragility of information aggregation in large elections," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 257-268.
    7. Feddersen, Timothy & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 1998. "Convicting the Innocent: The Inferiority of Unanimous Jury Verdicts under Strategic Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(1), pages 23-35, March.
    8. Steven Callander, 2007. "Bandwagons and Momentum in Sequential Voting," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 74(3), pages 653-684.
    9. Mehmet Ekmekci & Stephan Lauermann, 2020. "Manipulated Electorates and Information Aggregation," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 87(2), pages 997-1033.
    10. Hans Gersbach & Volker Hahn, 2008. "Should the individual voting records of central bankers be published?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 30(4), pages 655-683, May.
    11. John Morgan & Felix Várdy, 2012. "Mixed Motives and the Optimal Size of Voting Bodies," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(5), pages 986-1026.
    12. Lloyd Shapley & Bernard Grofman, 1984. "Optimizing group judgmental accuracy in the presence of interdependencies," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 329-343, January.
    13. Austen-Smith, David & Banks, Jeffrey S., 1996. "Information Aggregation, Rationality, and the Condorcet Jury Theorem," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 90(1), pages 34-45, March.
    14. Mehmet Ekmekci & Stephan Lauermann, 2019. "Manipulated Electorates and Information Aggregation," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2019_001, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    15. Young, H. P., 1988. "Condorcet's Theory of Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 82(4), pages 1231-1244, December.
    16. Midjord, Rune & Rodríguez Barraquer, Tomás & Valasek, Justin, 2017. "Voting in large committees with disesteem payoffs: A ‘state of the art’ model," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 430-443.
    17. Matias Iaryczower & Matthew Shum, 2012. "The Value of Information in the Court: Get It Right, Keep It Tight," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(1), pages 202-237, February.
    18. McLennan, Andrew, 1998. "Consequences of the Condorcet Jury Theorem for Beneficial Information Aggregation by Rational Agents," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(2), pages 413-418, June.
    19. Bengt Holmström, 1999. "Managerial Incentive Problems: A Dynamic Perspective," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 66(1), pages 169-182.
    20. Erik J. Balder, 1988. "Generalized Equilibrium Results for Games with Incomplete Information," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 13(2), pages 265-276, May.
    21. Sourav Bhattacharya, 2013. "Preference Monotonicity and Information Aggregation in Elections," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(3), pages 1229-1247, May.
    22. Bengt Holmstrom, 1999. "Managerial Incentive Problems: A Dynamic Perspective," NBER Working Papers 6875, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    23. Callander, Steven, 2008. "Majority rule when voters like to win," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 393-420, November.
    24. Breitmoser, Yves & Valasek, Justin, 2017. "A rationale for unanimity in committees," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economics of Change SP II 2017-308, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yves Breitmoser & Justin Valasek & Justin Mattias Valasek, 2023. "Why Do Committees Work?," CESifo Working Paper Series 10800, CESifo.
    2. Breitmoser, Yves & Valasek, Justin, 2023. "Why do committees work?," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 18/2023, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rune Midjord & Tomás Rodríguez Barraquer & Justin Mattias Valasek, 2019. "Robust Information Aggregation Through Voting," CESifo Working Paper Series 7713, CESifo.
    2. Breitmoser, Yves & Valasek, Justin, 2023. "Why do committees work?," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 18/2023, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    3. Yves Breitmoser & Justin Valasek & Justin Mattias Valasek, 2023. "Why Do Committees Work?," CESifo Working Paper Series 10800, CESifo.
    4. Breitmoser, Yves & Valasek, Justin, 2017. "A rationale for unanimity in committees," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economics of Change SP II 2017-308, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    5. Emeric Henry & Charles Louis-Sidois, 2018. "Voting and Contributing While the Group is Watching," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03393121, HAL.
    6. Bouton, Laurent & Castanheira, Micael & Llorente-Saguer, Aniol, 2016. "Divided majority and information aggregation: Theory and experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 114-128.
    7. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4g5hemr5o18g7os4h53mulpcam is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Midjord, Rune & Rodríguez Barraquer, Tomás & Valasek, Justin, 2017. "Voting in large committees with disesteem payoffs: A ‘state of the art’ model," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 430-443.
    9. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/4g5hemr5o18g7os4h53mulpcam is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Tajika, Tomoya, 2022. "Voting on tricky questions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 380-389.
    11. Emeric Henry & Charles Louis-Sidois, 2020. "Voting and Contributing When the Group Is Watching," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 246-276, August.
    12. Volker Hahn, 2012. "On the Optimal Size of Committees of Experts," Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz 2012-24, Department of Economics, University of Konstanz.
    13. Xie, Yinxi & Xie, Yang, 2017. "Machiavellian experimentation," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(4), pages 685-711.
    14. Alvaro J. Name-Correa & Huseyin Yildirim, 2018. "A capture theory of committees," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 177(1), pages 135-154, October.
    15. Daniel Gibbs, 2023. "Individual accountability, collective decision-making," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 34(4), pages 524-552, December.
    16. Hahn, Volker, 2011. "Sequential aggregation of verifiable information," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(11), pages 1447-1454.
    17. Volker Hahn, 2017. "On the drawbacks of large committees," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 46(2), pages 563-582, May.
    18. Name-Correa, Alvaro J. & Yildirim, Huseyin, 2019. "Social pressure, transparency, and voting in committees," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    19. Stephen Hansen & Michael McMahon, 2016. "First Impressions Matter: Signalling as a Source of Policy Dynamics," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 83(4), pages 1645-1672.
    20. Marina Agranov & Jacob K Goeree & Julian Romero & Leeat Yariv, 2018. "What Makes Voters Turn Out: The Effects of Polls and Beliefs," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 16(3), pages 825-856.
    21. Meirowitz, Adam & Pi, Shaoting, 2022. "Voting and trading: The shareholder’s dilemma," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(3), pages 1073-1096.
    22. Laurent Bouton & Aniol Llorente-Saguer & Antonin Macé & Dimitrios Xefteris, 2021. "Voting Rights, Agenda Control and Information Aggregation," NBER Working Papers 29005, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Information aggregation; Voting; Expressive payoffs; Condorcet Jury Theorem;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:198:y:2021:i:c:s002205312100171x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622869 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.