Convexity of integer veto and Elimination Procedures

Elimination Procedures generated by marginal contribution in an integer veto function implement through sincere (respectively sincere and sophisticated) behavior the core correspondence of the veto function if the latter is convex (respectively additive). Moreover a partial converse of this result is proved. A characterization of a subclass of convex (respectively additive) veto functions is thus obtained.I am indebted to Hervé Moulin for helpful comments concerning this paper. I am also grateful to an anonymous referee of this journal for his remarks.     

Black and Farquharson on order-of-voting effects: an extension

This paper, by using the known algorithms for calculating the oucomes under the amendment procedure and under the successive procedure, extends the statements of Black and Farquharson about order-of-voting effects: if alternativex, in thej-th position in an agenda, is the sincere (sophisticated) voting outcome with that agenda, then x is also the sincere (sophisticated) voting outcome with any agenda that is the same as the initial agenda with respect to the alternatives in positions from the first to the (j – 1)-th (from the (j + 1)-th to the last, respectively).I am grateful to David Austen-Smith and two anonymous referees for helpful suggestions and comments. The responsibility for any remaining errors is entirely mine.     

Candidate Stability and Voting Correspondences

We extend the analysis of Dutta et al. (in Econometrica, 69:1013–1038, 2001) on strategic candidacy to multivalued environments. For each agenda and each profile of voters’ preferences over running candidates, a voting correspondence selects set of running candidates. A voting correspondence is candidate stable if no candidate ever has an incentive to withdraw her candidacy when all other potential candidates run for office. In the multivalued framework, candidates’ incentives to withdraw depend on candidates’ preferences over sets. If candidates cannot vote and they compare sets of candidates according to their expected utility conditional on some prior probability assessment, then a voting correspondence satisfies candidate stability and unanimity if and only if it is dictatorial. If the probability assessments are restricted to be uniform, candidates’ preferences over sets are consistent with leximin preferences, or candidates can vote, then possibility results are obtained.This paper is a revised version of the second chapter of my Ph.D. Dissertation submitted to the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. I am indebted to my supervisor Salvador Barberà for his advice, encouragement, and patience. I thank the hospitality of the Wallis Institute of Political Economy at the University of Rochester, where the revision of this paper was conducted. I am grateful to two anonymous referees and the Associate Editor, John Weymark, for their exhaustive and insightful comments. I also thank Dolors Berga, Carmen Beviá, Walter Bossert, Jernej Čopič, Bhaskar Dutta, Matt Jackson, Jordi Massó, Diego Moreno, David Pérez-Castrillo, and Yves Sprumont for helpful conversations and suggestions. Financial support through Research Grant 1998FI00022 from Comissionat per Universitats i Recerca, Generalitat de Catalunya, Research Project PB98-870 from the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología, Fundación Barrié de la Maza, and Consejería de Innovación, Ciencia y Empresa, Junta de Andalucía is gratefully acknowledged. The usual disclaimer applies.     

On the landscape of the relation between Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger

Since Elisabeth Young-Bruehl first revealed it in Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, 1982, admirers of Hannah Arendt have been troubled by the fact that she was for four years—from 1924 to 1928—the mistress of Martin Heidegger. She was a Jew who fled Germany in August 1933, a few months after Hitler’s assumption of power. He was elected Rector of the University of Freiburg in the spring of 1933, and in a notorious inaugural address hailed the presence of the brown-shirted stormtroopers in his audience, claimed that Hitler would restore the German people to spiritual health, and ended by giving the familiar stiff-armed Nazi salute to cries of “Sieg Heil.” The thought that these two were ever soulmates is hard to swallow. I I am deeply indebted to Guenther Roth and Egon Bittner for important suggestion, which I used to improve an earlier draft of this article. I am grateful for help of many different kinds to Zygmunt Bauman, Inge Castellini, Teresa Gilman, Alison Grossman, Ellen B. Hill, Irving Louis Horowitz, Jonathan B. Imber, Denah Lida, Hans Mohr, Asja Petrović, David Riesman, and Harry Zohn.     

To transfer or to destroy

The transfer problem is by now well understood. In an important book Chichilnisky-Heal provide an example of a related paradox — the destroy paradox — in the context of a Walrasian stable economy. It is evident, however, that the paradox depends on the underlying data — tastes, preferences, and net export positions — of the economy. This paper gives necessary and sufficient conditions on the underlying data of a globally Walrasian stable Leontief economy for the occurrence of this paradox. The relationship between the transfer and destroy paradoxes in an economy with Leontief preferences is explored.I am grateful to John Donaldson, Duncan Foley, Giulio Ponte corvo, participants in the Colgate-Hamilton Economics workshop and especially, an associate editor and an anonymous referee of this journal for helpful comments. The usual disclaimers apply.     

Condorcet's jury theorem in light of de Finetti's theorem

This paper generalizes Condorcet's jury theorem to the case of symmetrically dependent votes with the help of de Finetti's theorem. Thus, the paper relaxes Condorcet's assumption of independent voting while preserving his main result: In jury-type situations a majority of voters is more likely than any single voter to choose the better of two alternatives.I am indebted to Professors Steven Brams, Arnold Buss, Gary Miller and Norman Schofield for their comments and questions. This paper is supported, in part, by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SES-9210800).     

Probabilistic Borda rule voting

An alternative voting system, referred to as probabilistic Borda rule, is developed and analyzed. The winning alternative under this system is chosen by lottery where the weights are determined from each alternatives Borda score relative to all Borda points possible. Advantages of the lottery include the elimination of strategic voting on the set of alternatives under consideration and breaking the tyranny of majority coalitions. Disadvantages include an increased incentive for strategic introduction of new alternatives to alter the lottery weights, and the possible selection of a Condorcet loser. Normative axiomatic properties of the system are also considered. It is shown this system satisfies the axiomatic properties of the standard Borda procedure in a probabilistic fashion.I thank Nic Tideman and Andrew Yates for helpful comments and especially appreciate detailed criticism from Keith Dougherty which greatly improved the exposition of the text. In addition, Don Saari, in his role as editor, suggested a number of clarifications and an important extension for which I am grateful. I accept full responsibility for any remaining shortcomings.     

Beating the blues: Cognitive-behavioral treatment for depression in child-maltreating young mothers

Young mothers are at risk for depression. The article first reviews research on social and cognitive risk factors for depression and then considers the relationship between depression and child maltreatment. Cognitive-behavioral casework techniques that may improve social integration and self-management—mitigators of depression—are detailed. Finally, a case study demonstrates the use of these techniques with a depressed and maltreating mother.I am indebted to Joni Hardcastle, Andre Ivanoff, Rita Marlow, and Josie Solseng Maxwell for their contributions to the development and testing of the methods herein described and to Victoria Velasquez for permission to use the case study. I am grateful to Steven Paul Schinke and the staff of Social Work Research, Child Development and Mental Retardation Center, University of Washington, for their support of this project and the William T. Grant Foundation for funding this work and for their commitment to improving the mental health care of young people. Special thanks to Pixie Reiten and Mary Ann Liebert. For assistance preparing this article I thank Jordana Ash, Lorretta Morales Dodson, Christine Frazita, Lois Holt, Vicki Keller and Sharon Ikami.     

Social welfare rankings of income distributions A new parametric concept of intermediate inequality

This paper installs a new concept of intermediate inequality, which we refer to as η-inequality equivalence, in the notable form of equivalence of the Lorenz partial ordering and social welfare dominance. The η-inequality equivalence is a parameterized generalization of Krtscha’s (1994) non-linear compromise between the relative and absolute inequality views. For each η ∈ [0,1], we place a class of social evaluation functions satisfying the S-concavity as well as the property that an increase in incomes while leaving η-inequality intact raises welfare. We prove that one income distribution dominates another for all social evaluation functions in iff the former has a higher mean and a higher η-Lorenz curve. We prove also that the class is strictly increasing in the sense of inclusion as η decreases.I am grateful to Kiyoshi Kuga for his helpful comments and suggestions. I am also grateful to an anonymous referee and an associate editor for many valuable comments and suggestions that have much improved the paper. A previous version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Japanese Economic Association, October 7, 2001, Tokyo, Japan. I wish to thank Takashi Toyoda for his helpful comments and suggestions at the meeting. This research was supported in part by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan (Grant-in-aid for Scientific Research No.12630032).     

Therapy of the Conscience: Technical Recommendations for Working on the Harsh Superego of the Patient

An indispensable goal of intensive psychotherapy is to modify areas of the superego which are unreasonably harsh and punitive—yet, surprisingly little is written on this topic. In this paper, after discussing various aspects of the superego, I recommend an active treatment technique which involves educating the patient, over time, about how pervasive and punitive is—for lack of a better word—the conscience—of his or her mind. During this process, one can expect a softening and lessening of the patient's punitive superego and an expansion of the patient's benign or benevolent superego, as the patient begins to identify with and introject more of the compassionate attitudes which have been imparted and experienced in the intimate relationship of psychotherapy.     

On ranking linear budget sets in terms of freedom of choice

This paper examines how freedom of choice as reflected in an agents opportunity sets can be measured in economic environments where opportunity sets are linear budget sets in the non-negative orthant of the n-dimensional real space. Three axioms, Symmetry, Monotonicity and Invariance of Scaling Effects, are proposed for this purpose and the measure based on volumes of budget sets is characterized. I am grateful to Prasanta K. Pattanaik for his encouragement and fruitful discussions over many years on this and related subjects. The first draft of this paper was written while I was visiting the Institute of Economic Research at Hitotsubashi University in Japan. I would like to thank its hospitality. Helpful comments of a referee are gratefully acknowledged.     

Equilibrium and efficiency with property rights and local consumption externalities

There is no mechanism that guarantees existence and Pareto optimality of equilibrium in all situations if each individual has limited property rights and a utility function that depends upon his neighbour's consumption. This is true under virtually any assumption about coalition formation. Therefore, Sen's paradox of the Paretian liberal is confirmed in an economic exchange setting with limited externalitities, and Coase's conjecture on the efficiency of bargaining with complete information is denied.David Austen-Smith, Michael Peters, and Jonathan Riley provided helpful comments at various stages. I am grateful for their suggestions and for the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada). Responsibility for the paper's deficiencies rests with the author, of course.     

A majority-rule characterization with multiple extensions

When May's necessary and sufficient conditions for majority rule as a binary voting rule are extended in a natural way to decisions over more than two options, the resulting conditions are consistent with the Borda and Black voting rules, but not with a variety of other voting rules for more than two options. This paper presents an alternative set of necessary and sufficient conditions for binary majority rule, which permits the plurality, Condorcet and (simplified) Dodgson rules, as well as the Borda and Black rules, but not the Copeland or Nanson rules, to be classified as extensions of binary majority rule to decisions over more than two options.I am indebted to Amartya Sen and anonymous referees for helpful suggestions     

Credible debate equilibria

Legislation is not an end in itself, but means to an end. Unfortunately, the technical relationship connecting any legislation to real consequences is rarely known for sure. In debate, legislators have an opportunity to persuade others of the relative value of particular bills, to influence the substance of the agenda, and to affect voting decisions. Since preferences over consequences are typically taken to be fixed, such persuasion etc. necessarily amounts to changing beliefs over the likely effects of various alternative bills. The extent to which debate can be effective in altering others' beliefs depends on how audiences interpret and assimilate any information speechmakers volunteer. This paper considers one plausible approach to credibility in debate. Debate is modeled as a cheap talk stage preceding an endogenous agenda setting game under incomplete information. In this framework, the issue can be formulated in terms of what constitutes an equilibrium. It is demonstrated that a fairly weak and intuitively plausible criterion of credibility effectively leads to there being little opportunity for credible transmission of information in debate.An earlier version of this paper was titled Credibility in Debate. I am extremely grateful to Jeffrey Banks, Randy Calvert and the anonymous referees for many valuable comments. The research was supported in part by the NSF under grant SES-8600468. I retain responsibility for any remaining errors and ambiguities in the paper.     

The Strong No Show Paradoxes are a common flaw in Condorcet voting correspondences

The No Show Paradox (there is a voter who would rather not vote) is known to affect every Condorcet voting function. This paper analyses two strong versions of this paradox in the context of Condorcet voting correspondences. The first says that there is a voter whose favorite candidate loses the election if she votes honestly, but gets elected if she abstains. The second says that there is a voter whose least preferred candidate gets elected if she votes honestly, but loses the election if she abstains. All Condorcet correspondences satisfying some weak domination properties are shown to be affected by these strong forms of the paradox. On the other hand, with the exception of the Simpson-Cramer Minmax and the Young rule, all the Condorcet correspondences that (to the best of our knowledge) are proposed in the literature suffer from these two paradoxes. Received: 30 November 1999/Accepted: 27 March 2000     

Strategic voting and nomination

Using computer simulations based on three separate data generating processes, I estimate the fraction of elections in which sincere voting is a core equilibrium given each of eight single-winner voting rules. Additionally, I determine how often each rule is vulnerable to simple voting strategies such as ‘burying’ and ‘compromising’, and how often each rule gives an incentive for non-winning candidates to enter or leave races. I find that Hare is least vulnerable to strategic voting in general, whereas Borda, Coombs, approval, and range are most vulnerable. I find that plurality is most vulnerable to compromising and strategic exit (causing an unusually strong tendency toward two-party systems), and that Borda is most vulnerable to strategic entry. I use analytical proofs to provide further intuition for some of my key results.     

Proportional representation in variable-size legislatures

This paper examines a method to achieve proportional representation (PR) for parties in a legislature that allows the size of the legislature to vary as a function of voting results. The legislature's base consists of one elected candidate from each voting district. Seats are then added to underrepresented parties to approximate their nationwide vote proportions. Additions are governed by rules designed to honor the single-member district concept, to keep the increase manageable, and to satisfy other desirable criteria.These rules work well in the two-party case although they limit the extent to which true PR is achieved. When there are three or more parties, it is necessary to relax the rules if reasonable moves toward PR are to occur.     

The lexicographic egalitarian solution on economic environments

This paper considers solutions to distribution problems defined on economic environments. It shows that there is a unique resource-egalitarian and symmetric solution that proposes always Pareto optimal allocations and satisfies Inidivual Restricted Monotonicity; this property requires the poor people of the society to be strictly better-off when social resources increase and the initial outcome is a welfare unequal position. That unique solution is the lexicographic extension of the maxmin criterion.I wish to express my gratitude to Salvador Barberá. I am also very grateful to Hervé Moulin for his encouragement and to Carmen Herrero, Iñigo Iturbe and an anonymous referee for their suggestions. I thank very specially the valuable reading of John Roemer and illuminating conversations with Serge Christophe Kolm. Financial support from Gobierno de Navarra is gratefully acknowledged     

Does uncertainty lead to sincerity? Simple and complex voting mechanisms

We ask whether the absence of information about other voters’ preferences allows optimal voting to be interpreted as sincere.We start by classifying voting mechanisms as simple and complex according to the number of message types voters can use to elect alternatives. We show that while in simple voting mechanisms the elimination of information about other voters’ preferences allows optimal voting to be interpreted as sincere, this is no longer always true for complex ones. In complex voting mechanisms, voters’ optimal strategy may vary with the size of the electorate. Therefore, in order to interpret optimal voting as sincere for complex voting mechanisms, we describe the optimal voting strategy when voters not only have no information but also have no pivotal power, i.e., as the size of the electorate tends to infinity.