Three ways to compute accurately the probability of the referendum paradox

Dominique Lepelley (1) , Vincent Merlin (2) , Jean-Louis Rouet (3)

1 CEMOI - Centre d'Économie et de Management de l'Océan Indien
2 CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management
3 ISTO - Institut des Sciences de la Terre d'Orléans

In a recent paper published in MSS, Wilson and Pritchard (2007) exhibit some results suggesting that the limiting probability of the referendum paradox given in Feix et al. (2004) could be wrong. After having explained the origin of this disagreement, we propose in this note some further analytical (and complementary) methods to compute the probability of this paradox.

Mots clés: voting paradoxes; probability calculations; IAC hypothesis

Domaines: Economies et finances

Dominique Lepelley, Vincent Merlin, Jean-Louis Rouet. Three ways to compute accurately the probability of the referendum paradox. Mathematical Social Sciences, 2011, 62 (1), pp.28-33. ⟨10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2011.04.006⟩. ⟨halshs-00602133⟩