Why Voting? A Welfare Analysis
研究委员会在是否接受提案或维持现状的集体决策中，应使用何种规则最大化社会福利，发现最优规则是排除货币转移、采用特定多数投票。
A committee decides collectively whether to accept a given proposal or to maintain the status quo. Committee members are privately informed about their valuations and monetary transfers are possible. According to which rule should the committee make its decision? We consider strategy-proof and anonymous mechanisms and solve for the decision rule that maximizes utilitarian welfare, which takes monetary transfers to an external agency explicitly into account. For regular distributions of preferences, we find that it is optimal to exclude monetary transfers and to decide by qualified majority voting. This sheds new light on the common objection that criticizes voting for its inefficiency.