東京大学政策評価研究教育センター

Title Weighted Voting and Information Acquisition in Committees
Date 2019年7月9日(月)July 9, 2019, 10:25-12:10
Venue 東京大学経済学研究科・学術交流棟(小島ホール)2階・コンファレンスルームに変更となりました(7月9日10:30) [地図]
*venue has been changed* Kojima Conference Room, Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall), University of Tokyo [MAP]
Speaker 高木悠貴(Yuki Takagi, Stanford University and CREPE)
Abstract In a weighted voting system, votes are assigned based on predetermined criteria, such as population for the decision-making at the EU Council, shares at shareholder meetings, and financial contribution at the IMF and the World Bank. The criterion is typically unrelated to the voters’ ability to make a correct judgment. Do these unequal decision power distributions undermine the accuracy of group decisions? The goal of this paper is to analyze how the distribution of votes affects the accuracy of group decisions. I introduce an information aggregation model in which voters are identical except for voting shares. If the information is free, the accuracy of group decisions is always higher under unweighted majority rule than any weighted majority rules. When acquiring information is costly, by contrast, I show that the accuracy of group decisions may be higher under some weighted majority rules than under unweighted majority rule. This may justify giving someone greater decision power even if the person is no more capable than others. More generally, I characterize the equilibrium in which weighted voters invest in information and unweighted voters do not. The number of voters who invest in equilibrium is decreasing in the cost of improving their information.
Information 英語での発表となります(Presentation in English)
主催:Microeconomics Workshop