International Economic Review· 2026Q1
Information Aggregation With Delegation of Votes
- 3citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
Liquid democracy (LD) equilibria can improve welfare and information aggregation compared to direct democracy, but may also introduce inefficient equilibria.
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Key points
- Liquid democracy (LD) equilibria can improve welfare and information aggregation relative to direct democracy.
- Economically interpretable conditions identify when these gains are strict.
- Optimal delegation strategies for committees are characterized.
- LD can introduce robust inefficient equilibria that are worse than direct democracy.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
ABSTRACT Liquid democracy (LD) combines elements of direct and representative democracy: voters can either vote directly or delegate their votes to others. We study its information aggregation properties in a setting with heterogeneously and privately informed independent and partisan voters. We establish that LD always has equilibria that improve welfare and information aggregation relative to direct democracy, identify economically interpretable conditions under which these gains are strict, and characterise optimal delegation for salient classes of committees. However, while delegation improves the best‐equilibrium, it can also introduce robust inefficient equilibria that perform worse than direct democracy.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. International Economic Review, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Economics and Econometrics
Economics and EconometricsEconomics, Econometrics and Finance