A functional equation of tail-balance for continuous signals in the Condorcet jury theorem

DOI10.1007/S00010-020-00750-1MaRDI QIDQ2227520zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Bo Chen, Steve Alpern, A. J. Ostaszewski

Publication date 15 February 2021

Published in Aequationes Mathematicae (Search for Journal in Brave)

Copyright license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.11827

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Functional equations for real functions (39B22) Voting theory (91B12)

Abstract: Consider an odd-sized jury, which determines a majority verdict between two equiprobable states of Nature. If each juror independently receives a binary signal identifying the correct state with identical probability $p$, then the probability of a correct verdict tends to one as the jury size tends to infinity (Condorcet, 1785). Recently, the first two authors developed a model where jurors sequentially receive signals from an interval according to a distribution, which depends on the state of Nature and on the juror's "ability", and vote sequentially. This paper shows that to mimic Condorcet's binary signal, such a distribution must satisfy a functional equation related to tail-balance, that is, to the ratio $alpha(t)$ of the probability that a mean-zero random variable satisfies $X>t$ given that $|X|>t$. In particular, we show that under natural symmetry assumptions the tail-balances $alpha(t)$ uniquely determine the distribution.

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Cites work

• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 42530 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 43570 (Why is no real title available?)
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Cited in

(1)

• Optimizing voting order on sequential juries: a median voter theorem and beyond

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