Elections, Private Information, and State-Dependent Candidate Quality

TY - UNPB

T1 - Elections, Private Information, and State-Dependent Candidate Quality

AU - Jensen, Thomas

N1 - JEL Classification: D72, D82

PY - 2007

Y1 - 2007

N2 - In this paper we contribute to the study of how democracy works when politicians are better informed than the electorate about conditions relevant for policy choice. We do so by setting up and analyzing a game theoretic model of electoral competition. An important feature of the model is that candidate quality is state-dependent. Our main insight is that if the electorate is sufficiently well informed then there exists an equilibrium where the candidates' policy positions reveal their information and the policy outcome is the same as it would be if voters were fully informed (the median policy in the true state of the world)

AB - In this paper we contribute to the study of how democracy works when politicians are better informed than the electorate about conditions relevant for policy choice. We do so by setting up and analyzing a game theoretic model of electoral competition. An important feature of the model is that candidate quality is state-dependent. Our main insight is that if the electorate is sufficiently well informed then there exists an equilibrium where the candidates' policy positions reveal their information and the policy outcome is the same as it would be if voters were fully informed (the median policy in the true state of the world)

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - electoral competition

KW - uncertainty

KW - private information

KW - candidate quality

KW - revealing equilibria

M3 - Working paper

BT - Elections, Private Information, and State-Dependent Candidate Quality

PB - Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen

ER -