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The Banks Set and the Uncovered Set in Budget Allocation Problems

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Social Choice and Strategic Decisions

Part of the book series: Studies in Choice and Welfare ((WELFARE))

Summary

We examine how a society chooses to divide a given budget among various regions, projects or individuals. In particular, we characterize the Banks set and the Uncovered Set in such problems. We show that the two sets can be proper subsets of the set of all alternatives, and at times are very pointed in their predictions. This contrasts with well-known “chaos theorems,” which suggest that majority voting does not lead to any meaningful predictions when the policy space is multidimensional.

This paper was written in fond memory of our dear friend and colleague Jeffrey Scot Banks. Financial support under NSF grant SES-0316493 is gratefully acknowledged. We thank Salvador Barbera for helpful conversations that helped spark some of the ideas behind the model we develop here, and David Austen-Smith for detailed comments on an earlier draft.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Warwick, Warwick

    Bhaskar Dutta

  2. California Institute of Technology, USA

    Matthew O. Jackson

  3. University of Toulouse 1, Toulouse

    Michel Le Breton

Authors
  1. Bhaskar Dutta
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  2. Matthew O. Jackson
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  3. Michel Le Breton
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Managerial Economics & Decision Sciences, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2001 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL, 60208-2009, USA

    David Austen-Smith (Earl Dean Howard Distinguished Professor of Political Economy) (Earl Dean Howard Distinguished Professor of Political Economy)

  2. W. Allen Wallis Institute of Political Economy, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14627, USA

    John Duggan (Associate Professor of Political Science and Economics) (Associate Professor of Political Science and Economics)

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Dutta, B., Jackson, M.O., Le Breton, M. (2005). The Banks Set and the Uncovered Set in Budget Allocation Problems. In: Austen-Smith, D., Duggan, J. (eds) Social Choice and Strategic Decisions. Studies in Choice and Welfare. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-27295-X_7

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