Constitutional Design 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.

Publications:

• On the Limits of Democracy, Social Choice and Welfare, 37(2), 2011, 201-217.
  (Hans Gersbach)
• On Higher Hurdles for Incumbents, Economics Bulletin, 30(1), 2010, 774-785.
  (Hans Gersbach)
• Minority Voting and Long-term Decisions, Games and Economic Behavior, 69(2), 2010, 329-345.
  (Theresa Fahrenberger and Hans Gersbach)
  Working Paper Version: available here
• Democratic Mechanisms, Journal of the European Economic Association, 7(6), 2009, 1436-1469.
  (Hans Gersbach)
  Working Paper Version: available here
• Minority Voting and Public Project Provision, Economics: The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal 3, 2009
  (Hans Gersbach)
• Dividing Resources by Flexible Majority Rules, Social Choice and Welfare, 23, 2004, 295-308.
  (Hans Gersbach)
  Working Paper Version: available here
• Why One Person One Vote?, Social Choice and Welfare, 23, 2004, 449-464.
  (Hans Gersbach)
  Working Paper Version: available here
• Fiscal Constitutions, Constitutional Political Economy, 15(1), 2004, 3-25.
  (Hans Gersbach)
  Working Paper Version: available here

Working Papers:

• Democratic Provision of Divisible Public Goods
  (Hans Gersbach)
• Short-Term Deviations from Simple Majority Voting
  (Theresa Fahrenberger)
• Debt-sensitive Majority Rules
  (Johannes Gerd Becker, Hans Gersbach and Oliver Grimm)
• Constitutional Design: Separation of Financing and Project Decision
  (Hans Gersbach, Volker Hahn and Stephan Imhof)
• Legislative Process with Open Rules
  (Theresa Fahrenberger and Hans Gersbach)
• Bundling and the Unanimity Rule
  (Ulrich Erlenmaier and Hans Gersbach)
• Flexible Majority Rules
  (Ulrich Erlenmaier and Hans Gersbach)
• Tax Rules
  (Hans Gersbach, Volker Hahn and Stephan Imhof)

Team Members: Hans Gersbach, Vitalijs Butenko, Oriol Tejada, Kamali Wickramage

Cooperation Partners: Ulrich Erlenmaier, Theresa Fahrenberger, Felix Mühe, Oliver Grimm, Stefan Imhof