Collective decision making by committee

✍ Scribed by A. J. Hughes Hallett

• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 1991
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 777 KB
• Volume: 24
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1573-9414
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00354854

✦ Synopsis

Implicitly or explicitly, economic decisions always contain elements of compromise. However, the bargaining models of economic theory treat only the two decision maker case with linearly aggregated priorities; i.e. compromise decisions under Pareto optimality and no side payments. Even then the relative importance of the decision makers remains indeterminate. This paper proposes a simplified bargaining model with three new features: (a) it allows multiple participants; (b) it uses optimal voting patterns to combine the policy proposals, rather than the policy priorities, to form those compromise decisions; and (c) it determines the relative power of each participant endogenously. Perhaps more important, the method does not depend on each decision maker knowing the preferences of his colleagues exactly.