Social choice in large populations with single-peaked preferences
An anonymous social choice function for a large atomless population maps cross-section distributions of preferences into outcomes. Because any one individual is too insignificant to affect these distributions, every anonymous social choice function is individually strategy- proof. However, not every anonymous social choice function is group strategy-proof. If the set of outcomes is linearly ordered and participants have single-peaked preferences, an anonymous social choice function is group strategy-proof if and only if it can be implemented by a mechanism involving binary votes between neighbouring outcomes with nondecreasing thresholds for "moving higher up". Such a mechanism can be interpreted as a version of Moulin's (1980) generalized median-voter mechanism for a large population.
D60 - Welfare Economics. General ; D70 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making. General ; D82 - Asymmetric and Private Information ; H41 - Public Goods