Suchergebnisse

Contents -- Contributors -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter 1. Networks and Markets: Concepts for Bridging Disciplines / James E. Rauch and Gary G. Hamilton -- Chapter 2. Bandwidth and Echo: Trust, Information, and Gossip in Social Networks / Ronald S. Burt -- Discussion: Another View of Trust and Gossip / Joel Sobel -- Chapter 3. The Organization of the Taiwanese and South Korean Economies: A Comparative Equilibrium Analysis / Robert C. Feenstra, Gary G. Hamilton, and Deng-Shing Huang -- Discussion: Stability, Efficiency and the National Organization of Production / Neil Fligstein

We study the competitive equilibrium of a market for votes where voters can trade votes for a numeraire before making a decision via majority rule. The choice is binary and the number of supporters of either alternative is known. We identify a sufficient condition guaranteeing the existence of an ex ante equilibrium. In equilibrium, only the most intense voter on each side demands votes and each demand enough votes to alone control a majority. The probability of a minority victory is independent of the size of the minority and converges to one half, for any minority size, when the electorate is arbitrarily large. In a large electorate, the numerical advantage of the majority becomes irrelevant: democracy is undone by the market.