Competitive Equilibrium in Markets for Votes

Alessandra Casella, Aniol Llorente-Saguer, Thomas R. Palfrey

NBER Working Paper No. 16315
Issued in August 2010
NBER Program(s):Public Economics Program, Political Economy Program

We develop a competitive equilibrium theory of a market for votes. Before voting on a binary issue, individuals may buy and sell their votes with each other. We define the concept of Ex Ante Vote-Trading Equilibrium, identify weak sufficient conditions for existence, and construct one such equilibrium. We show that this equilibrium must always result in dictatorship and the market generates welfare losses, relative to simple majority voting, if the committee is large enough. We test the theoretical implications by implementing a competitive vote market in the laboratory using a continuous open-book multi-unit double auction.

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w16315

Published: Alessandra Casella & Aniol Llorente-Saguer & Thomas R. Palfrey, 2012. "Competitive Equilibrium in Markets for Votes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(4), pages 593 - 658. citation courtesy of

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