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Political information acquisition for social exchange

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  • ALDASHEV, Gani

Abstract

We model political information acquisition in large elections, where the probability of being piv- otal is negligible. Our model builds on the assumption that informed citizens enjoy discussing politics with other informed citizens. The resulting information acquisition game exhibits strate- gic complementarities. We find that information acquisition depends negatively on the social distance between citizens. Next, we build an application of the model to the distributive politics game. Equilibrium policies are biased towards regions/groups with lower social distance between citizens. Finally, we present evidence for the basic model's main prediction based on the data from the 2000 U.S. National Elections Study. Citizens with a shorter residence span (thus having a less developed local social network, i.e. facing a larger social distance) acquire significantly less political information than the otherwise similar long-term residents.

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  • ALDASHEV, Gani, 2006. "Political information acquisition for social exchange," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2006020, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    • Handle: RePEc:cor:louvco:2006020
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    Cited by:

    1. Valentino Larcinese, 2009. "Information Acquisition, Ideology and Turnout: Theory and Evidence From Britain," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 21(2), pages 237-276, April.
    2. R. Aytimur & Aristotelis Boukouras & Robert Schwager, 2014. "Voting as a signaling device," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 55(3), pages 753-777, April.
    3. Valentino Larcinese, 2007. "Does political knowledge increase turnout? Evidence from the 1997 British general election," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 131(3), pages 387-411, June.
    4. Karamychev, Vladimir A. & Swank, Otto H., 2022. "A social image theory of information acquisition, opinion formation, and voting," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    5. Couttenier, Mathieu & Hatte, Sophie, 2016. "Mass media effects on non-governmental organizations," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 57-72.
    6. Christian Bruns, 2013. "Elections and Market Provision of Information," CESifo Working Paper Series 4091, CESifo.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    information acquisition; social interactions; global games;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

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