Simulating Voting Rule Reforms for the Italian Parliament: An Economic Perspective

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate about the electoral rules in Italy. In particular, we simulate some voting rules to test what is the best electoral system on the basis of a utility function that takes into account two indices — representativeness and governability. As long as governability is important, a mixed member system (75% first-past-the-post, 25% proportional representation) outperforms the others. Our tool is the software ALEX4.1.