TY  - JOUR
AU  - Casella,Alessandra
AU  - Gelman,Andrew
TI  - A Simple Scheme to Improve the Efficiency of Referenda
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11375
PY  - 2005
Y2  - May 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11375
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11375.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Alessandra Casella
Department of Economics
Columbia University
420 West 118 Street
New York, NY 10027
Tel: 212/854-2459
Fax: 212/854-8059
E-Mail: ac186@columbia.edu

Andrew Gelman
Department of Statistics
and Department of Political Science
Columbia University
New York, NY 10027
E-Mail: gelman@stat.columbia.edu
AB  - This paper proposes a simple scheme designed to elicit and reward intensity of preferences in referenda: voters faced with a number of binary proposals are given one regular vote for each proposal plus an additional number of bonus votes to cast as desired. Decisions are taken according to the majority of votes cast. In our base case, where there is no systematic difference between proposals' supporters and opponents, there is always a positive number of bonus votes such that ex ante utility is increased by the scheme, relative to simple majority voting. When the distributions of valuations of supporters and opponents differ, the improvement in efficiency is guaranteed only if the distributions can be ranked according to first order stochastic dominance. If they are, however, the existence of welfare gains is independent of the exact number of bonus votes.
ER  -