IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jgames/v11y2020i1p4-d305512.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public Information: Relevance or Salience?

Author

Listed:
  • Giovanna M. Invernizzi

    (Political Science Department, Columbia University, 420 W 118th St., New York, NY 10027, USA
    I would like to offer my special thanks to Alessandra Casella, Judd Kessler, Mark Dean, Silvio Ravaioli, Pietro Ortoleva and participants of the Experimental Economics Seminar at Columbia for valuable and constructive suggestions. I thank participants to seminars and conferences in Harvard HEWG, Princeton PE research group, SWEET New York, BMP Rice and EITM Summer Institute for their helpful comments.)

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Giovanna M. Invernizzi, 2020. "Public Information: Relevance or Salience?," Games, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-28, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jgames:v:11:y:2020:i:1:p:4-:d:305512
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/11/1/4/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/11/1/4/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fudenberg, Drew & Levine, David K., 2014. "Recency, Consistent Learning, and Nash Equilibrium," Scholarly Articles 13477947, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    2. Pedro Bordalo & Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer, 2012. "Salience Theory of Choice Under Risk," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(3), pages 1243-1285.
    3. Kawamura, Kohei & Vlaseros, Vasileios, 2017. "Expert information and majority decisions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 77-88.
    4. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    5. Austen-Smith, David & Banks, Jeffrey S., 1996. "Information Aggregation, Rationality, and the Condorcet Jury Theorem," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 90(1), pages 34-45, March.
    6. Gabriele Gratton & Richard Holden & Anton Kolotilin, 2018. "When to Drop a Bombshell," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(4), pages 2139-2172.
    7. David Strömberg, 2015. "Media and Politics," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 173-205, August.
    8. Liu, Shuo, 2019. "Voting with public information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 694-719.
    9. David W. Nickerson, 2007. "Quality Is Job One: Professional and Volunteer Voter Mobilization Calls," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(2), pages 269-282, April.
    10. Wit, Jorgen, 1998. "Rational Choice and the Condorcet Jury Theorem," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 364-376, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gabriele Gratton & Galina Zudenkova, 2020. "Introduction to the Special Issue Political Games: Strategy, Persuasion, and Learning," Games, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-2, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kohei Kawamura & Vasileios Vlaseros, 2015. "Expert Information and Majority Decisions," Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 261, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    2. Tsakas, Nikolas & Xefteris, Dimitrios, 2021. "Stress-testing the runoff rule in the laboratory," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 18-38.
    3. Mengel, Friederike & Rivas, Javier, 2017. "Common value elections with private information and informative priors: Theory and experiments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 190-221.
    4. Berno Buechel & Lydia Mechtenberg & Alexander F. Wagner, 2022. "When do proxy advisors improve corporate decisions?," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 22-47, Swiss Finance Institute.
    5. Kawamura, Kohei & Vlaseros, Vasileios, 2017. "Expert information and majority decisions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 77-88.
    6. Morton, Rebecca B. & Piovesan, Marco & Tyran, Jean-Robert, 2019. "The dark side of the vote: Biased voters, social information, and information aggregation through majority voting," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 461-481.
    7. Liu, Shuo, 2019. "Voting with public information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 694-719.
    8. Buechel, Berno & Mechtenberg, Lydia, 2019. "The swing voter's curse in social networks," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 241-268.
    9. Großer, Jens & Seebauer, Michael, 2016. "The curse of uninformed voting: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 205-226.
    10. Benjamin Enke & Florian Zimmermann, 2019. "Correlation Neglect in Belief Formation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(1), pages 313-332.
    11. Quement, Mark T. Le & Marcin, Isabel, 2020. "Communication and voting in heterogeneous committees: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 449-468.
    12. Schaefer, Alexander, 2021. "Rationality, uncertainty, and unanimity: an epistemic critique of contractarianism," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 37(1), pages 82-117, March.
    13. Bouton, Laurent & Castanheira, Micael & Llorente-Saguer, Aniol, 2017. "Multicandidate elections: Aggregate uncertainty in the laboratory," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 132-150.
    14. Ian Chadd & Emel Filiz-Ozbay & Erkut Y. Ozbay, 2021. "The relevance of irrelevant information," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(3), pages 985-1018, September.
    15. Mechtenberg, Lydia & Tyran, Jean-Robert, 2019. "Voter motivation and the quality of democratic choice," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 241-259.
    16. Irenaeus Wolff, 2023. "Heuristic Centered-Belief Players," TWI Research Paper Series 128, Thurgauer Wirtschaftsinstitut, Universität Konstanz.
    17. Patrick Hummel, 2012. "Deliberation in large juries with diverse preferences," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 150(3), pages 595-608, March.
    18. Alaoui, Larbi & Germano, Fabrizio, 2020. "Time scarcity and the market for news," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 173-195.
    19. Dohmen, Thomas & Quercia, Simone & Willrodt, Jana, 2018. "Willingness to Take Risk: The Role of Risk Conception and Optimism," IZA Discussion Papers 11642, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Scharf, Kimberley & Perroni, Carlo & Pogrebna, Ganna & Sandford, Sarah, 2014. "Are Donors Afraid of Charities' Core Costs? Scale Economies in Non-profit Provision," CEPR Discussion Papers 10179, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jgames:v:11:y:2020:i:1:p:4-:d:305512. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.