Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0 Series: Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers Creation-Date: 2011-03-24 Number: 11-058/1 Author-Name: Rene van den Brink Author-Email: jrbrink@feweb.vu.nl Author-Workplace-Name: VU University Amsterdam Author-Name: Agnieszka Rusinowska Author-Email: agnieszka.rusinowska@univ-paris1.fr Author-Workplace-Name: Universite Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne Author-Name: Frank Steffen Author-Email: steffen2@liverpool.ac.uk Author-Workplace-Name: The University of Liverpool Management School (ULMS) Title: Measuring Power and Satisfaction in Societies with Opinion Leaders: An Axiomatization Abstract: This discussion paper led to a publication in 'Social Choice and Welfare', 2013, 41(3), 671-683.

A well-known model in sociology and marketing is that of opinion leadership. Opinion leaders are actors who are able to affect the behavior of their followers. Hence, opinion leaders have some power over their followers, and they can exercise this power by influencing their followers choice of action. We study a two-action model for a society with opinion leaders. We assume that each member of the society has an inclination to choose one of these actions and that the collective choice is made by simple majority of the actions chosen by each member. For this model we axiomatize satisfaction and power scores, which allow us to investigate the effects of different opinion leader-follower structures. Classification-JEL: D71, D85 Keywords: Collective choice, follower, influence, opinion leader, power, satisfaction, axiomatization File-Url: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/11058.pdf File-Format: application/pdf File-Size: 252030 bytes Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20110058