IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/series/v7y2016i3d10.1007_s13209-016-0143-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Information in elections: Do third inflexible candidates always promote truthful behavior?

Author

Listed:
  • Ascensión Andina-Díaz

    (Universidad de Málaga)

Abstract

We model an election between two Downsian mainstream candidates and a third inflexible politician. There is uncertainty about the state of the world. Candidates receive signals on the state and propose a policy to implement. There are two classes of voters: ideological, who are biased towards the policy proposed by the third candidate; and non-ideological, who want the policy implemented to correspond to the state of the world. We study two cases: (1) one in which the third candidate supports the most popular policy (in terms of the electorate’s prior); (2) another one in which he supports the less popular policy. We obtain that the presence of a third candidate facilitates equilibria in which the two mainstream politicians make informative announcements, specially when the third candidate is biased towards the most popular policy. We also obtain that many of the informative equilibria are sustained by a coalition government, however the coalition is never between the two mainstream candidates. Last, we observe that in equilibrium, the third inflexible candidate has significant chances of winning office.

Suggested Citation

  • Ascensión Andina-Díaz, 2016. "Information in elections: Do third inflexible candidates always promote truthful behavior?," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 7(3), pages 307-339, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:series:v:7:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1007_s13209-016-0143-8
    DOI: 10.1007/s13209-016-0143-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s13209-016-0143-8
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s13209-016-0143-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christian Schultz, 1996. "Polarization and Inefficient Policies," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(2), pages 331-344.
    2. repec:bla:scandj:v:97:y:1995:i:3:p:357-68 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Massimo Morelli, 2004. "Party Formation and Policy Outcomes under Different Electoral Systems," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(3), pages 829-853.
    4. Heidhues, Paul & Lagerlof, Johan, 2003. "Hiding information in electoral competition," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 48-74, January.
    5. Schultz, Christian, 2002. "Policy biases with voters' uncertainty about the economy and the government," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 487-506, March.
    6. Roemer, John E., 1994. "The Strategic Role of Party Ideology When Voters Are Uncertain about How the Economy Works," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(2), pages 327-335, June.
    7. Jean-François Laslier & Karine Straeten, 2004. "Electoral competition under imperfect information," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 24(2), pages 419-446, August.
    8. Mike Felgenhauer, 2012. "Revealing information in electoral competition," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 153(1), pages 55-68, October.
    9. Martinelli, Cesar, 2001. "Elections with Privately Informed Parties and Voters," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 108(1-2), pages 147-167, July.
    10. Massimo Morelli & Richard Van Weelden, 2013. "Ideology and information in policymaking," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 25(3), pages 412-439, July.
    11. Harrington, Joseph E, Jr, 1993. "Economic Policy, Economic Performance, and Elections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 27-42, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Zhang, Qiaoxi, 2020. "Vagueness in multidimensional proposals," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 307-328.
    2. Gratton, Gabriele, 2014. "Pandering and electoral competition," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 163-179.
    3. Heidhues, Paul & Lagerlof, Johan, 2003. "Hiding information in electoral competition," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 48-74, January.
    4. Correa-Lopera, Guadalupe, 2019. "Demand of direct democracy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    5. Mike Felgenhauer, 2012. "Revealing information in electoral competition," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 153(1), pages 55-68, October.
    6. Foucart, Renaud & Schmidt, Robert C., 2019. "(Almost) efficient information transmission in elections," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 147-165.
    7. Robert C. Schmidt, 2015. "The political economy of climate policy," Working Papers 2015015, Berlin Doctoral Program in Economics and Management Science (BDPEMS).
    8. Thomas Jensen, 2013. "Elections, Information, and State-Dependent Candidate Quality," Discussion Papers 13-03, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    9. McMurray, Joseph, 2022. "Polarization and pandering in common-interest elections," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 150-161.
    10. Thomas Jensen, 2015. "Elections, Information, and State-Dependent Candidate Quality," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 17(5), pages 702-723, October.
    11. Espen R. Moen & Christian Riis, 2010. "Policy Reversal," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 1261-1268, June.
    12. Cesar Martinelli & Akihiko Matsui, 1999. "Policy Reversals: Electoral Competition with Privately Informed Parties," Working Papers 9905, Centro de Investigacion Economica, ITAM, revised Jan 2000.
    13. Thomas Jensen, 2009. "Electoral Competition when Candidates are Better Informed than Voters," EPRU Working Paper Series 2009-06, Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    14. Christian Schultz, 2003. "Information, Polarization and Delegation in Democracy," CESifo Working Paper Series 1104, CESifo.
    15. Carsten Helm & Michael Neugart, 2013. "Coalition Governments and Policy Reform with Asymmetric Information," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 169(3), pages 383-406, September.
    16. Archishman Chakraborty & Parikshit Ghosh & Jaideep Roy, 2020. "Expert-Captured Democracies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(6), pages 1713-1751, June.
    17. César Martinelli & Akihiko Matsui, 2002. "Policy Reversals and Electoral Competition with Privately Informed Parties," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 4(1), pages 39-61, January.
    18. Schultz, Christian, 2002. "Policy biases with voters' uncertainty about the economy and the government," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 487-506, March.
    19. repec:dar:wpaper:35489 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Prato, Carlo & Wolton, Stephane, 2022. "Wisdom of the crowd? Information aggregation in representative democracy," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 86-95.
    21. Gabriele Gratton, 2011. "Pandering, Faith and Electoral Competition," Discussion Papers 2012-22, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Electoral competition; Heterogeneous voters; Information transmission; Voting; Coalition governments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:spr:series:v:7:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1007_s13209-016-0143-8. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.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.