Voters Can Have Strong Incentives To Become Informed, Or To Be Strategically Ignorant
- Creators
- Hanson, Robin
Abstract
Before an election, two candidates choose policies which are lotteries over election-day distributive positions. I find conditions under which there exist mixed-strategy probabilistic-voting equilibria which are independent, treating voter groups independently. When voter efforts determine the quality of their signals regarding candidate positions, voters can have strong incentives regarding their visible efforts made before candidates choose policies. Also, scale economies in group information production can make voters prefer large groups. Even with zero information costs, however, voters can ex ante prefer ignorance to full information. Optimal ignorance emphasizes negative over positive news, and induces candidates to take stable positions.
Additional Information
Revised version. Original date unknown. I thank Mike Alvarez, Matt Jackson, Steven Knack, John Ledyard, Richard McKelvey, and Thomas Palfrey for comments on earlier versions of this paper. I especially thank Kim Border for help in thinking about proving existence. I thank the New Millennium Program Office of the Jet Propulsion Lab of NASA for financial support.Attached Files
Submitted - sswp968_-_revised.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 80498
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20170816-141436805
- JPL New Millennium Program Office
- Created
-
2017-08-17Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2019-10-03Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Social Science Working Papers
- Series Name
- Social Science Working Paper
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 968