We study a model in which agents with single-peaked preferences can participate in a costly voting procedure to determine the value of a one-dimensional variable. We show that, for all positive participation costs and all profiles of individual preferences, there exists a unique equilibrium...

We study the districting problem from an axiomatic point of view in a framework with two parties, deterministic voter preferences and geographical constraints. The axioms are normatively motivated and reflect a notion of fairness to voters. Our main result is an “impossibility” theorem...

In the recent experimental literature several social preference models have been suggested that address observed behavior not reducible to the pursuit of self-interest. Inequality aversion is one such model where preferences are distributional. Frequently, envy is suggested as the underlying...

We characterize the preference domains on which the Borda count satisfies Arrow's ``independence of irrelevant alternatives" condition. Under a weak richness condition, these domains are obtained by fixing one preference ordering and including all its cyclic permutations (``Condorcet cycles")....

In this paper, we report on a series of free-form bargaining experiments in which two players have to distribute four indivisible goods among themselves. In one treatment the monetary payoffs associated with each bundle of goods are common knowledge; in a second treatment only the ordinal ranking...

We show that optimal partisan redistricting with geographical constraints is a computationally intractable (NP-complete) problem. In particular, even when voter's preferences are deterministic, a solution is generally not obtained by concentrating opponent's supporters in "unwinnable" districts...