ECONOMICS Chapter Notes -Median Voter Theorem, Anthony Downs, Ordinal Utility

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partwi085

9 Dec 2021

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Mahatma Gandhi University - Kerala

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Humanities

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ECONOMICS

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The preferences of the median voter play a central role in the downsian model of competition between political parties. As long as all preferences are single peaked; the outcome of majority voting reflects the preferences of the median voter. Median voter is a voter whose preferences lie in the middle of the set of all voters" preferences; half the voters want more of the good than the median voter, and half want less. The median voter theorem can also be illustrated with the help of following figure. Assume that there are three individuals whose demand curves for the public output, e. g. police protection, are shown as d1, d2 and d3. In figure (b) the ordinal utility indices (preference functions) of each individual are shown as (1), (2) and (3). Each individual faces a price of op for the public output.

Related Questions

1. Without government intervention, public goods tend to be

a. underproduced and common resources tend to be under-consumed.

b. overproduced and common resources tend to be overconsumed

c. overproduced and common resources tend to be under-consumed.

d. underproduced and common resources tend to be overconsumed.

2. Which of the following pairs of goods includes a good that is excludable and rival in consumption as well as a good that is not excludable and not rival in consumption?

a. congested non-toll road, national defense

b. tablet computer, a gym membership at a gym that always has plenty of open equipment and classes

c. online music subscription, streetlight

d. tablet computer, national defense

3. Which of the following is a lesson from the Condorcet paradox?

a. Majority voting always indicates what outcome a society really wants.

b. Under certain conditions, there is no scheme for aggregating individual preferences.

c. When there are more than two options, deciding the order in which to vote can have a powerful influence over the outcome of an election.

d. If voters are choosing a point along a line, then the majority rule will pick the most preferred point of the median voter.

crimsonalligator541

Carrboro has three equal-sized groups of people: (1) type A people consistently prefer more police protection to less; (2) type B people prefer high levels of police protection to low levels and they prefer low levels to medium levels; (3) type C people prefer medium levels to low levels, which they in turn prefer by a modest amount to high levels.

(a) Which types of people have single-peaked preferences? Which have multi-peaked preferences?

(b) Will majority voting generate consistent outcomes in this case? Why or why not?

Suppose there are three voters, Leslie, Ron, and April. They need to decide whether to have
low (L), medium (M), or high (H) levels of spending on public art installations. Suppose that their preferences orderings are as follows:

Rank April Ron Leslie
1 M L H
2 L M M
3 H H L

1. Which level of public art spending wins if the election is H vs. L? L vs. M? M vs. H?

2. Does majority voting lead to a stable collective decision-making rule in this case?

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ECONOMICS Chapter Notes -Median Voter Theorem, Anthony Downs, Ordinal Utility

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