Elections, Private Information, and State-Dependent Candidate Quality
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Elections, Private Information, and State-Dependent Candidate Quality. / Jensen, Thomas.
Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen, 2007.Research output: Working paper › Research
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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 -
ID: 877358