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Elections with expert politicians
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Squintani, Francesco and Tinn, Katrin (2011) Elections with expert politicians. In: Midwest Political Science Association Conference 2011, Chicago, April 2011 (Unpublished)
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Abstract
We study elections between two candidates who hold some private information valuable for the whole electorate. Under the standard Downsian assumption of office motivation, we find that there exist fully-revealing equilibria, where the candidates do not conceal any of their information. Surprisingly, however, the fully revealing equilibrium maximizing the electorate welfare has one of the two parties truthfully revealing her signal, and the other one acting as a benevolent dictator: She always selects the platform that maximizes the voter’s welfare, on the basis of her own private information, and she is always voted in power. Hence, self-interested competition among purely opportunities parties turns out to be very poor in aggregating information of expert political candidates. But this is not because politicians pander to the median voter’s beliefs excessively. Indeed, fully-revealing equilibrium strategies turn out to be not sufficiently moderate relative to the socially optimal ones. Turning to the opposite polar extreme of purely benevolent parties, we surprisingly uncover an equilibrium where one party always chooses a platform to the left of the other party, regardless of the candidates’ signals
Item Type: | Conference Item (Paper) | ||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory | ||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics | ||||
Official Date: | April 2011 | ||||
Dates: |
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Status: | Not Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Version or Related Resource: | Squintani, Francesco and Tinn, Katrin (2011). Elections with expert politicians. In: MOVE – Urrutia Elejalde Workshop on Information, Dynamics, and Political Decision Making. Barelona, 13-14 Dec 2010. | ||||
Conference Paper Type: | Paper | ||||
Title of Event: | Midwest Political Science Association Conference 2011 | ||||
Type of Event: | Conference | ||||
Location of Event: | Chicago | ||||
Date(s) of Event: | April 2011 | ||||
Related URLs: |
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