Constitutional Design, Democratic Mechanisms, and New Collective Decision Rules
We investigate how democratic constitutions can be designed to achieve an efficient provision of public projects. In particular, we analyze a variety of new types of decision and agenda rules that have been invented by our chair. Examples:
- Flexible majority rules: The size of the majority needed depends on the proposal made by the agenda setter.
- Two-stage unanimity rules: In the first stage, voters decide on a broad package of public projects; if the package is rejected, only voting about single projects is allowed.
- Flexible agenda costs: The costs for agenda-setting depend on the number of supporting votes.
- Rotating agenda setting and agenda repetition in combination with flexible majority rules.
- Minority voting: Only the losing minority of one period keeps the voting right for the collective decision in the next period.
- Balanced voting: Citizens may abstain from voting on a fundamental direction in a first stage. In a second voting stage, this guarantees them a voting right on the variations of the fundamental direction chosen in the first.
- Assessment voting: Before the conclusive voting, a given number of randomly-chosen voters cast their votes. Once the results of the first round are published, the initiative group has the possibility to withdraw its proposal.
Publications
- Democratizing Tech Giants! A Roadmap, Economics of Governance, forthcoming.
(Hans Gersbach)
Download Working Paper Version - History-bound Reelections, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, forthcoming.
(Hans Gersbach)
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- Channeling the Say in Political Decision Bodies, Economic Inquiry, forthcoming.
(Hans Gersbach, Stephan Imhof, and Oriol Tejada)
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- Information Sharing in Democratic Mechanisms, International Journal of Game Theory, 2020, 1-31.
(Hans Gersbach and Volker Britz)
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- Channeling the Final Say in Politics: A Simple Mechanism, Economic Theory, 2019, 1-33.
(Hans Gersbach, Stephan Imhof, and Oriol Tejada)
external page PDF Download - Information Markets, Elections and Contracts, Publiched as Chapter 5 in, Redesigning Democracy: More Ideas for better Rules, 2017, Springer, Heidelberg.
(Hans Gersbach)
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- Democratic Provision of Divisible Public Goods, Publiched as Chapter 8 in, Redesigning Democracy: More Ideas for better Rules, 2017, Springer, Heidelberg.
(Hans Gersbach)
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- Redesigning Democracy: More Ideas for better Rules, 2017, Springer, Heidelberg.
(Hans Gersbach)
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- Co-voting Democracy, Economics of Governance, 18(4), 2017, 337-349.
(Hans Gersbach)
Download Working Paper Version - Flexible Majority Rules in Democracyville: A Guided Tour, Mathematical Social Sciences, 85(C), 2017, 492-513.
(Hans Gersbach)
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- Higher Bars for Incumbents and Experience, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 29(3), 2017, 492-513.
(Hans Gersbach and Markus Müller)
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- Can Democracy Induce Development? A Constitutional Approach, Public Choice 159(1-2), 2014, 177-196.
(Hans Gersbach and Lars Siemers)
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- Tax Rules, Social Choice and Welfare, 41(1), 2013, 19-42.
(Hans Gersbach, Volker Hahn and Stephan Imhof)
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- Preferences for Harmony and Minority Voting, Mathematical Social Sciences, 63(1), 2012, 1-13.
(Theresa Fahrenberger and Hans Gersbach)
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- On the Limits of Democracy, Social Choice and Welfare, 37(2), 2011, 201-217.
(Hans Gersbach)
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- Minority Voting and Long-term Decisions, Games and Economic Behavior, 69(2), 2010, 329-345.
(Theresa Fahrenberger and Hans Gersbach)
Download Working Paper Version - On Higher Hurdles for Incumbents, Economics Bulletin 30(1), 2010, 774-785.
(Hans Gersbach)
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- Democratic Mechanisms, Journal of the European Economic Association, 7(6), 2009, 1436-1469.
(Hans Gersbach)
external page Working Paper Version - Minority Voting and Public Project Provision, Economics: The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal, 3, 2009.
(Hans Gersbach)
Download Working Paper Version (PDF, 330 KB) - Flexible Majority Rules for Central Banks, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 41(2-3), 2009, 507-516.
(Hans Gersbach and Bernhard Pachl)
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- Dividing Resources by Flexible Majority Rules, Social Choice and Welfare, 23, 2004, 295-308.
(Hans Gersbach)
Download Working Paper Version (PDF, 252 KB) - Why One Person One Vote?, Social Choice and Welfare, 23, 2004, 449-464.
(Hans Gersbach)
Download Working Paper Version (PDF, 222 KB) - Fiscal Constitutions, Constitutional Political Economy, 15(1), 2004, 3-25.
(Hans Gersbach)
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Working Papers
- Download Semi-flexible Majority Rules for Public Good Provision
(Hans Gersbach and Oriol Tejada)
- external page The Effects of Higher Re-election Hurdles and Costs of Policy Change on Political Polarization
(Hans Gersbach, Philippe Muller, and Oriol Tejada)
- external page Debt-sensitive Majority Rules
(Johannes Gerd Becker, Hans Gersbach and Oliver Grimm) - Download Bundling and the Unanimity Rule
(Ulrich Erlenmaier and Hans Gersbach)