Actually, I'm in the process of writing up a short article for Public Choice on this topic (as Bryan may recall).
If expressive voting theory holds, and if expressive benefits are increasing in the amount of money "voted" under the Tideman-Tullock procedure, then the demand revelation process should induce worse outcomes than the current system. Specifically, people who have the strongest preferences are accorded only one vote each in the current system. Under the demand revelation process, their influence will be magnified relative to more instrumentally-oriented voters. Under the demand-revealing process, if my vote is decisive in changing the outcome, I have to pay an amount equal to the amount of my dollar vote that was necessary to swing the outcome: say that $1 million votes for option A and my $20,000 vote was enough to generate $1,010,000 in votes for B; then I owe a tax of $10,000. Say that I get expressive benefits of $1000 by telling everyone I've put in a bid of $10,000 for policy option A under the demand revealing process. So long as my chances of being decisive are less than 1/10, it's rational for me to bid $10,000 and gain the $1000 in expressive benefits. In equilibrium, the people with the strongest expressive preferences bid the most and none of them are likely to be decisive, and outcomes are worse than under a one-man one-vote system, so long as expressive preferences diverge from instrumental preferences (which Bryan's work strongly suggests). Eric Crampton On Mon, 26 Aug 2002, Bryan Caplan wrote: > If I remember correctly, demand revelation mechanisms are useless if the > probability of decisiveness is low and voters get some direct utility > from expressive voting or holding irrational beliefs. > > Thus, suppose I get a $10 direct expressive benefit from voting for tons > of useless health care spending, and the probability of decisiveness is > 1-in-a-million. I don't see how any demand revelation mechanism is > going to help. > > -- > Prof. Bryan Caplan > Department of Economics George Mason University > http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > "He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he felt that no one > would have understood what he wanted to say, and besides it was not > necessary that anyone but himself should understand it." > Leo Tolstoy, *The Cossacks* > >
