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Strategy-proofness and “median voters”

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Abstract

We consider the problem of choosing a level of the public good for an economy in which agents have continuous and single-peaked preferences (Black, 1948). We show that a solution satisfyingstrategy-proofness andcontinuity if and only if it is an augmented median-voter solution. Anaugmented median-voter solution is described in terms of 2n parameters (which satisfy an antimonotonicity condition) as follows:n+1 of them are selected according to an increasing order of the peaks; the outcome is the median of thesen+1 parameters and then peaks. This result establishes a formal connection between strategy-proofness and a generalized notion of median voter. (Similar median formulas were used by Moulin (1980) to describe smaller classes of solutions.) We provide an interpretation of these 2n parameters in terms of the following properties:anonymity, voter sovereignty, unanimity, andPareto efficiency.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics and Finance, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

    Stephen Ching

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  1. Stephen Ching
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Additional information

I wish to thank William Thomson for his enormous effort in supervision. I am grateful to Jeff Banks, Marcus Berliant, Tarik Kara, Hideo Konishi, Shige Serizawa, John Weymark, two anonymous referees of this journal, and the participants of the Theory Workshop at the University of Rochester, the Econometric Society Meeting, Winter 1994, and the International Game Theory Conference at SUNY, Stony Brook, July 1993 for their useful comments. All remaining errors are my own responsibility.

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Ching, S. Strategy-proofness and “median voters”. Int J Game Theory 26, 473–490 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01813886

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01813886

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