IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/15704.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Local Evidence and Diversity in Minipublics

Author

Listed:
  • Bobkova, Nina
  • Bardhi, Arjada

Abstract

We study optimal minipublic design with endogenous evidence. A policymaker selects a group of citizens—a minipublic—for advice on the desirability of a policy. Citizens can discover local evidence but might be deterred by uncertainty about the policymaker’s adoption standard. We show that such uncertainty can be detrimental to evidence discovery even with costless evidence, civic-minded citizens, and ex ante aligned players. Evidence discovery is hardest to sustain under moderate uncertainty. The optimal minipublic has low diversity: it overrepresents citizens around the median citizen and underrepresents those at the margins. Our findings bear implications for the French Citizens’ Convention on Climate.

Suggested Citation

  • Bobkova, Nina & Bardhi, Arjada, 2021. "Local Evidence and Diversity in Minipublics," CEPR Discussion Papers 15704, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:15704
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP15704
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Adrien Fabre & Bénédicte Apouey & Thomas Douenne & Louis-Gaëtan Giraudet & Jean-François Laslier & Antonin Macé, 2020. "Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat : Les citoyens de la Convention comparés à des échantillons représentatifs de la population française. Note de travail," Working Papers halshs-02919695, HAL.
    2. Timothy Feddersen & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 1997. "Voting Behavior and Information Aggregation in Elections with Private Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(5), pages 1029-1058, September.
    3. Jovanovic, Boyan & Rob, Rafael, 1990. "Long Waves and Short Waves: Growth through Intensive and Extensive Search," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(6), pages 1391-1409, November.
    4. Gentzkow, Matthew & Kamenica, Emir, 2017. "Bayesian persuasion with multiple senders and rich signal spaces," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 411-429.
    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. Doruk Cetemen & Can Urgun & Leeat Yariv, 2023. "Collective Progress: Dynamics of Exit Waves," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 131(9), pages 2402-2450.
    2. Emilia Brito & Jesse Bruhn & Thea How Choon & E. Anna Weber, 2024. "Gender Composition and Group Behavior: Evidence from US City Councils.," Working Papers 2024-002, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    3. Jean-Michel Benkert & Ludmila Matyskova & Egor Starkov, 2024. "Strategic Attribute Learning," Papers 2412.10024, arXiv.org.

    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. Burkhard Schipper & Hee Yeul Woo, 2012. "Political Awareness and Microtargeting of Voters in Electoral Competition," Working Papers 124, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    2. Micael Castanheira, 2003. "Why Vote For Losers?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(5), pages 1207-1238, September.
    3. Robbett, Andrea & Matthews, Peter Hans, 2018. "Partisan bias and expressive voting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 107-120.
    4. Meirowitz, Adam, 2005. "Deliberative Democracy or Market Democracy: Designing Institutions to Aggregate Preferences and Information," Papers 03-28-2005, Princeton University, Research Program in Political Economy.
    5. Ernesto Dal Bo, 2000. "Bribing Voters," Economics Series Working Papers 39, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    6. Oscar Afonso & Pedro Neves & Maria Thompson, 2014. "The skill premium and economic growth with costly investment, complementarities and international technological-knowledge diffusion," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(6), pages 878-905, September.
    7. Bhattacharya, Sourav & Duffy, John & Kim, Sun-Tak, 2014. "Compulsory versus voluntary voting: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 111-131.
    8. Mark Knell & Simone Vannuccini, 2022. "Tools and concepts for understanding disruptive technological change after Schumpeter," Jena Economics Research Papers 2022-005, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    9. Alastair Smith & Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Tom LaGatta, 2017. "Group incentives and rational voting1," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 29(2), pages 299-326, April.
    10. Battaglini, Marco, 2005. "Sequential voting with abstention," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 445-463, May.
    11. Olsson, Ola, 2001. "Why Does Technology Advance in Cycles?," Working Papers in Economics 38, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    12. Fernanda L L de Leon, 2013. "Adding Ideology to the Equation: New Predictions for Election Results under Compulsory Voting," University of East Anglia Applied and Financial Economics Working Paper Series 044, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    13. Maliar, Lilia & Maliar, Serguei, 2004. "Endogenous Growth And Endogenous Business Cycles," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(5), pages 559-581, November.
    14. Pak Hung Au & Mark Whitmeyer, 2018. "Attraction versus Persuasion: Information Provision in Search Markets," Papers 1802.09396, arXiv.org, revised May 2022.
    15. Larionov, Daniil & Pham, Hien & Yamashita, Takuro & Zhu, Shuguang, 2021. "First Best Implementation with Costly Information Acquisition," TSE Working Papers 21-1261, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Apr 2022.
    16. Gordon Rausser & Leo Simon & Jinhua Zhao, 2015. "Rational exaggeration and counter-exaggeration in information aggregation games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 59(1), pages 109-146, May.
    17. Cujean, Julien & Bustamante, Maria Cecilia & Frésard, Laurent, 2019. "Knowledge Cycles and Corporate Investment," CEPR Discussion Papers 14152, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Roland Bénabou & Jean Tirole, 2006. "Belief in a Just World and Redistributive Politics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(2), pages 699-746.
    19. Kawamura, Kohei, 2008. "Communication for Public Goods," SIRE Discussion Papers 2008-25, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    20. Ginzburg, Boris, 2017. "Sincere voting in an electorate with heterogeneous preferences," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 120-123.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Minipublic; Evidence discovery; Political uncertainty; Informational diversity; Demographic diversity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cpr:ceprdp:15704. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.