Voting with public information

Liu, Shuo

doi:10.1016/j.geb.2018.11.011

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…This section formally derives the theoretical predictions that are tested in the laboratory experiment. The same results have been derived in KV and Reference [15], and have been recently extended in Reference [16].…”

Section: The Modelsupporting

confidence: 71%

“…I also performed a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to compare the two samples of voting for the public signal when it is provided before or after the private. Although we cannot reject that the two distribution are the same (with a p-value of 0.15), the number of observation is too small to rely on this result, and graphically showing the ECDFs provides much better evidence 16. AsFigures A4 and A5in Appendix A show, there are no session-specific effects: individual votes are homogeneous across different sessions.…”

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confidence: 83%

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Public Information: Relevance or Salience?

Invernizzi

2020

Games

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How does salient public information affect voters’ behavior? In a majoritarian voting game with common preferences, rational voters could use public information as an information device (depending on accuracy) or as a coordination device (regardless of accuracy). A simple lab experiment contradicts both hypotheses – subjects tend to follow public information when it is salient, regardless of the information’s accuracy, but fail to use it as a source of coordination. In particular, it matters whether the information is recent – subjects are more likely to follow public information when it is provided closer to the voting decision. These findings are important because the salience of public information is easily manipulable by political actors.

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Section: The Modelsupporting

confidence: 71%

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confidence: 83%

Public Information: Relevance or Salience?

Invernizzi

2020

Games

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“…Exploring how media consumption correlates with voters' characteristics and whether large elections can aggregate dispersed voter information is undoubtedly a salient issue. Second, voters may also have private information beyond the public news provided by mass media (Liu, 2019). Our approach does not directly extend to these contexts since voters no longer have common posterior beliefs, due to idiosyncratic private information.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Theory on Media Bias and Elections

2019

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We develop a tractable theory to study the impact of biased media on election outcomes, voter turnout and welfare. News released by media allows voters to infer the relative appeal of the two candidates, and the closeness of elections. In large elections, the former determines the election outcome, whereas the latter drives voter turnout. With a single media outlet, a rise in media bias affects the election outcome in a non-monotonic way, and reduces voter welfare by decreasing the probability of electing the efficient candidate and increasing aggregate turnout costs. Introducing extra media outlets can systematically shift the election outcome and voter turnout in either direction, but it weakly improves voter welfare. The impact of other ways to strengthen media competition-such as increased polarization and prevention of collusion-critically depends on whether media have commitment power; if not, they can worsen information transmission and voter welfare.

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The swing voter's curse in social networks

Buechel

Mechtenberg

2019

Games and Economic Behavior

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We study private communication in social networks prior to a majority vote on two alternative policies. Some (or all) agents receive a private imperfect signal about which policy is correct. They can, but need not, recommend a policy to their neighbors in the social network prior to the vote. We show theoretically and empirically that communication can undermine efficiency of the vote and hence reduce welfare in a common interest setting. Both efficiency and existence of fully informative equilibria in which vote recommendations are always truthfully given and followed hinge on the structure of the communication network. If some voters have distinctly larger audiences than others, their neighbors should not follow their vote recommendation; however, they may do so in equilibrium. We test the model in a lab experiment and find strong support for the comparative-statics and, more generally, for the importance of the network structure for voting behavior.

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Voting with public information

Cited by 5 publications

References 36 publications

Public Information: Relevance or Salience?

Public Information: Relevance or Salience?

A Theory on Media Bias and Elections

The swing voter's curse in social networks

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