FINAN 4130 - Voting In Public and Corporate Sectors

Many important decisions are made via voting processes. Some obvious examples include corporate boardrooms, shareholder meetings, industry councils, judicial rulings, fiscal policymaking, selection of religious leaders, the choice of officers of fraternities, and of course, the selection of national leaders. This class brings the tools of game theory and econometric analysis to the study of voting. This course draws on work in corporate finance and political economy to study how voting does and sometimes does not work. Voting is popular because it can provide a simple and transparent way to resolve differences in preferences and aggregate dispersed information. As we shall see, whether equilibrium or strategic behavior in voting processes achieves these ends sometimes merits further analysis, and in some settings, the choice of how voting occurs can be quite consequential.