Abstract

We introduce semi-flexible majority rules for public good provision with private valuations. Such rules take the form of a two-stage, multiple-round voting mechanism where the output of the first stage is the default alternative for the second stage and the vote-share thresholds used in every round of binary voting (a) vary with the alternative on the table for a public-good level and (b) require a qualified majority for approving the alternative on the table by stopping the procedure. We show that these mechanisms implement the ex post utilitarian optimal public-good level, provided valuations can only be high or low. This public-good level is chosen after all potential socially optimal alternatives have been picked for a voting round. We explore ways to reduce the number of voting rounds and develop a compound mechanism when there are three or more valuation types.

中文翻译：

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提供公共物品的半灵活多数规则

摘要

我们引入半灵活的多数规则来提供私人估值的公共物品。此类规则采用两阶段、多轮投票机制的形式，其中第一阶段的输出是第二阶段的默认替代方案，并且每轮二元投票中使用的投票份额阈值(a) 随(b) 需要特定多数才能通过停止程序来批准桌面上的替代方案。我们表明，只要估值只能高或低，这些机制就实现了事后功利主义的最优公共物品水平。在一轮投票中选出所有潜在的社会最佳替代方案后，就会选择这个公共利益水平。我们探索了在存在三种或更多估值类型时减少投票轮数并开发复合机制的方法。