The “value” or “worth” of a man is, as of all other things, his price, that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his power.
Abstract
The power of voters in a voting game (simple game) is viewed as the amount they would be paid by a lobbyist buying their votes. Equilibrium prices for the voters are shown to exist whenever there is no veto player, and the expected incomes of the voters are compared with other measures of their voting power.
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This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant MPS 75-07414 with the Graduate School of the City University of New York.
The author wishes particularly to thank Lloyd Shapley for a number of helpful remarks on the presentation.
Thomas Hobbes
Leviathan, Pt. I, Ch. 10
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Young, H.P. Power, prices, and incomes in voting systems. Mathematical Programming 14, 129–148 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01588961
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01588961