AI summary · arXiv: 2302.09548v1 · econ.TH

Designing binary social decisions

Kirneva Margarita, Núñez Matías
Original paper Submitted to arXiv on 19 Feb. 2023 38 pages, 2 figures License: CC BY 4.0

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The essentials

  • Majority voting with random checks is a mechanism proposed by Kirneva and Nuñez that fully implements the majority rule for binary social decisions.
  • The mechanism involves a simultaneous vote over two options, followed by confirmation of the winner by at least one agent from a random sample of agents voting sequentially.
  • If no agent confirms the outcome, a lottery is held to incentivize agents to act truthfully.
  • This mechanism reduces the number of stages required for implementation by almost half compared to existing mechanisms.
  • Lotteries are introduced into their mechanisms to remove undesirable equilibria where the minority preferred candidate wins due to too many votes for the same option making no agent pivotal.
  • Modifications are proposed to ensure truthful reporting and reduce strategic uncertainty in cases where agents have incomplete information or may choose to abstain from voting.

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AI-generated keywords: Majority voting Random checks Lottery Incomplete information Abstention

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In their paper "Designing binary social decisions," Margarita Kirneva and Matías Nuñez propose a mechanism called Majority voting with random checks that fully implements the majority rule for binary social decisions. The mechanism involves a simultaneous vote over two options, followed by confirmation of the winner by at least one agent from a random sample of agents voting sequentially. If no agent confirms the outcome, a lottery is held to incentivize agents to act truthfully. The authors show that this mechanism reduces the number of stages required for implementation by almost half compared to existing mechanisms. They also extend their results to incomplete information and abstention and introduce additional implementation mechanisms based on network formation. The authors note that while majority voting is the most popular voting rule for binary decisions, it can still result in undesirable equilibria where the minority preferred candidate wins due to too many votes for the same option making no agent pivotal. To address this issue, Kirneva and Nuñez introduce lotteries into their mechanisms which removes these undesirable equilibria and helps design shorter mechanisms. The paper also considers an extended version of the mechanism where agents have incomplete information or may choose to abstain from voting. In such cases, they propose modifications to ensure truthful reporting and reduce strategic uncertainty. Overall, this paper provides valuable insights into designing efficient mechanisms that implement socially desirable outcomes in binary social decisions while addressing issues related to strategic behavior and incomplete information.

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