Experiments on the Core: Some Disconcerting Results for Majority Rule Voting Games

Abstract

In the context of spatial majority voting games, considerable experimental support exists for the core as a solution hypothesis when it exists (c.f. Berl, et al, 1976; Fiorina and Plott, 1978). Some recent experimentation, however, hints at possible problems in a finite alternative setting. Isaac and Plott (1978) report several such experiments in which subjects fail to adopt a core, although their experimental design uses a particular procedure of chairman control that might account for these results. Elsewhere (1979b) we report a series of vote trading experiments in which the core's success rate is less than fifty percent. In this essay we present some additional experimental evidence to suggest that committee choice in simple majority rule games is not dictated solely by whether or not a Condorcet (core) point exists. We conclude that, in the experimental context of open and free discussion, the performance of the core is affected by the structure of alternative space, and also by the structure of the perceived dominance relation beneath the core in the social ordering.

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