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Francesco Squintani (University of Warwick)

6 October 2015 @ 12:00

 

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Details

Date:
6 October 2015
Time:
12:00
Event Category:

“Information Revelation and Pandering in Elections”

Abstract

Does electoral competition induce office motivated candidates to commit to policies that reflect their information? Or do candidates hide their information, and pander to the electorate’s beliefs? We find that efficient information aggregation is precluded, but candidates’ platforms may be informative: Equilibrium policy can at best be based on the information of one only of the two politicians. The inefficiency is not necessarily due to pandering. Politicians may overreact to their information relative to the electorate’s prior belief, i.e. anti-pander, in equilibrium. In fact, an appropriate degree of pandering would improve voters’ welfare instead of harming it. Our welfare results hold beyond the standard framework with candidates’ commitment to policy. In a suitable sense, they persist in alternative game forms in which politicians can make cheap-talk announcements.