Published June 1, 2007
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Journal Article
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Signaling Character in Electoral Competition
- Creators
- Kartik, Navin
- McAfee, R. Preston
Chicago
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Abstract
We study a one-dimensional Hotelling-Downs model of electoral competition with the following innovation: a fraction of candidates have "character" and are exogenously committed to a campaign platform; this is unobservable to voters. Character is desirable, and a voter's utility is a convex combination of standard policy preferences and her assessment of a candidate's character. This structure induces a signaling game between strategic candidates and voters, since a policy platform affects voters' utilities not only directly, but also indirectly through inferences about a candidate's character. The model generates a number of predictions, starting with a failure of the median voter theorem. (JEL D72, D82)
Additional Information
Copyright © American Economic Association 2007. We thank Nageeb Ali, Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, Steve Callander, Arnaud Costinot, Vince Crawford, Dino Gerardi, Nir Jaimovich, Dilip Mookherjee, Joel Sobel, and various audiences for comments and discussions; three anonymous referees for helpful suggestions; and Jeremy Bulow for encouraging us to develop a model of primaries.Files
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- CaltechAUTHORS:KARaer07
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2007-09-17Created from EPrint's datestamp field
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