Voting Behavior and Information Aggregation in Elections With Private Information

Feddersen, Timothy; Pesendorfer, Wolfgang

doi:10.2307/2171878

Cited by 492 publications

(362 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Dekel and Piccione (2000) show that symmetric binary-agenda sequential elections with instrumentally-motivated voters have equilibria in which voting behavior is independent of history. Such equilibria replicate the outcomes of simultaneous voting games and thereby attain informational efficiency in large elections (Feddersen and Pesendorfer, 1997). Outside of sequential elections, observational learning has also been studied in coordination problems (Dasgupta, 2000), common-value auctions (Neeman and Orosel, 1999), settings with network externalities (Choi, 1997), and when agents partially internalize the welfare of future agents (Smith and Sorensen, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Herding with collective preferences

Ali

Kartik

2011

Econ Theory

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This paper studies a simple model of observational learning where agents care not only about the information of others but also about their actions. We show that despite complex strategic considerations that arise from forward-looking incentives, herd behavior can arise in equilibrium. The model encompasses applications such as sequential elections, public good contributions, and leadership charitable giving.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Herding with collective preferences

Ali

Kartik

2011

Econ Theory

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“…This gives rise to a unique equilibrium in which only citizens with costs below an endogenous threshold vote. 11 More recent papers in the private-values costly-voting paradigm include Campbell (1999) and Borgers (2004). 12 Campbell (1999) studies a model in which members of the minority group possess stronger political preferences (higher values or lower costs) than members of the majority.…”

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confidence: 99%

Public information and electoral bias

Taylor

Yıldırım

2010

Games and Economic Behavior

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We present a theory of strategic voting that predicts (1) elections are more likely to be close, and (2) voter turnout is more likely to be high when citizens possess better public information about the composition of the electorate. These findings are disturbing because they suggest that providing more information to potential voters about aggregate political preferences (e.g., through pre-election polls, political stock markets, or expert forecasts) may actually undermine the democratic process. We analyze both small and large elections. We show that if the distribution of preferences is common knowledge, then the unique type-symmetric equilibrium leads to a stark neutrality result in which the probability that either alternative wins the election is 1 2 . We demonstrate that this neutrality result is endemic to large elections. By contrast, when citizens are ignorant about the distribution of preferences, the majority is more likely to win the election and expected voter turnout is lower. Welfare is, therefore, unambiguously higher when citizens possess less information about the distribution of preferences.JEL Classifications: C72, D72, D82.

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“…In several, the receiver (henceforth the center) decides according to majority rule. We discuss two of these papers, Austen-Smith and Banks (1996) [AB] and Feddersen and Pesendorfer (1997) [FP]. The starting point for both is Condorcet (1785).…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Rational exaggeration and counter-exaggeration in information aggregation games

2015

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We study an information aggregation game in which each of a finite collection of "senders" receives a private signal and submits a report to the center, who then makes a decision based on the average of these reports. The integration of three features distinguishes our framework from the related literature: players' reports are aggregated by a mechanistic averaging rule, their strategy sets are intervals rather than binary choices, and they are ex ante heterogeneous. In this setting, players engage in a "tug-of-war," as they exaggerate and counter-exaggerate in order to manipulate the center's decision. While incentives to exaggerate have been studied extensively, the phenomenon of counter-exaggeration is less well understood. Our main results are as follows. First, the cycle of counter-exaggeration can be broken only by the imposition of exogenous bounds on the space of admissible sender reports. Second, in the unique pure-strategy equilibrium, all but at most one player is constrained with positive probThe authors are grateful to seminar participants at the University of Washington, Iowa State University, Michigan State University, the University of Cassino (Italy), and the University of California at Berkeley. Qu Tang provided invaluable research assistance. The authors have benefited from conversations with many colleagues, especially Susan Athey, Carlo Russo, Rachael Goodhue, George Judge, Larry Karp, Wolfgang Pesendorfer, Chris Shannon, and Sofia Villas-Boas. We have benefited from thoughtful assessment by the reviewer and editor of this journal. ability by one of the report bounds. Our third and fourth results hold for a class of "anchored" games. We show that if the report space is strictly contained in the signal space, then welfare is increasing in the size of the report space, but if the containment relation is reversed, welfare is independent of the size of the space. Finally, the equilibrium performance of our heterogeneous players can be unambiguously ranked: a player's equilibrium payoff is inversely related to the probability that her exaggeration will be thwarted by the report bounds.

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Voting Behavior and Information Aggregation in Elections With Private Information

Cited by 492 publications

References 16 publications

Herding with collective preferences

Herding with collective preferences

Public information and electoral bias

Rational exaggeration and counter-exaggeration in information aggregation games

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