In: Accounting
Banzhaf Power Index
Consider 5 voters, labeled A, B, C, D, and E, who are shareholders on a company board.
1) If there are 11 votes total and a 2/3 majority is required to pass a motion, what is the quota? That is, how many votes are required to pass a motion?
(Hint: the answer is a whole number between 0 and 11 that represents at least a 2/3 majority).
2) Suppose A has 5 votes, B has 3 votes, and C, D, and E have one vote each. Determine the Normalized BPI and the Absolute BPI for each voter.
3) If A gives one vote to B, so that the new distribution of votes is: A has 4, B has 4, C has 1, D has 1, and E has 1, what happens to voter A's Normalized BPI (meaning, voter A's share of power)--does it increase, decrease, or stay the same?
4) In a weighted voter scheme, a "dummy voter" is a voter who effectively has no power (NBPI = 0) even though they are allowed more than zero votes.
Give an example of a voting situation (quota and distribution of votes among voters) where at least one of the voters is a dummy voter.
5) Give your best explanation for the apparently paradoxical answer to #3 above.
Answer to 1.
Votes required to pass a motion
Total votes = 11 multiplied by 2/3rd
= 7.33
= 8 (Whole number)
Hence the quota is 8
Answer to 2.
A critical player is one whose vote makes the difference between winning or losing. Let T be the total number of critical players.
The Banzhaf power index of a player P is the number of times P is critical, divided by T.
Winning coalitions |
Weight |
Critical players |
A, B |
8 |
A, B |
A,B,C |
9 |
A,B |
A,B,D |
9 |
A,B |
A,B,E |
9 |
A,B |
A,C,D,E |
8 |
A,C,D,E |
A,B,C,D |
10 |
A,B |
A,B,D,E |
10 |
A,B |
A,B,C,E |
10 |
A,B |
A,B,C,D,E |
11 |
A |
In the example, A is critical 8 times, B is critical 7 times, and C, D & E is only critical 1 time.
Normalised Banzhaf index: the number of swings as a proportion of the total number of swings for all members. The indices sum to 1 over all members.
T (Critical times) |
Power |
|
A |
9 |
47.37% |
B |
7 |
36.84% |
C |
1 |
5.26% |
D |
1 |
5.26% |
E |
1 |
5.26% |
19 |
Absolute Banzhaf index: the number of swings divided by the number of possible voting outcomes among the other members.
T (Critical times) |
Power |
|
A |
9 |
100.00% |
B |
7 |
77.78% |
C |
1 |
11.11% |
D |
1 |
11.11% |
E |
1 |
11.11% |
19 |
Answer to 3.
Winning coalitions |
Weight |
Critical players |
A, B |
8 |
A, B |
A,B,C |
9 |
A,B |
A,B,D |
9 |
A,B |
A,B,E |
9 |
A,B |
A,B,C,D |
10 |
A,B |
A,B,D,E |
10 |
A,B |
A,B,C,E |
10 |
A,B |
A,B,C,D,E |
11 |
T (Critical times) |
Power |
|
A |
7 |
50.00% |
B |
7 |
50.00% |
C |
0 |
0.00% |
D |
0 |
0.00% |
E |
0 |
0.00% |
14 |
1 |
So the revise power of A reduces to 50% from 100%
Answer to 4.
In the answer 3 it can be observed that A & B are power voter’s whereas C, D & E are dummy voters. Dummy voters are those who do not have any weightage i.e. NBPI of 0%