Rights statement: This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in European Economic Review. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in European Economic Review, 119, 2019 DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2019.07.005
Accepted author manuscript, 454 KB, PDF document
Available under license: CC BY-NC-ND
Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - (Almost) efficient information transmission in elections
AU - Foucart, Renaud
AU - Schmidt, Robert C.
N1 - This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in European Economic Review. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in European Economic Review, 119, 2019 DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2019.07.005
PY - 2019/10/1
Y1 - 2019/10/1
N2 - We study a model in which two parties compete by announcing their policies, after receiving conditionally independent private signals about the true state of the world. Parties are both office- and policy-motivated. Our model can explain radically different policy positions, even when parties receive identical signals and have unbiased preferences. This holds in an asymmetric equilibrium in which both parties reveal their private information to the voters and the implemented policy is (almost) first-best for all possible realizations of parties’ signals. In this equilibrium, one party adopts extreme and the other one moderate policy positions.
AB - We study a model in which two parties compete by announcing their policies, after receiving conditionally independent private signals about the true state of the world. Parties are both office- and policy-motivated. Our model can explain radically different policy positions, even when parties receive identical signals and have unbiased preferences. This holds in an asymmetric equilibrium in which both parties reveal their private information to the voters and the implemented policy is (almost) first-best for all possible realizations of parties’ signals. In this equilibrium, one party adopts extreme and the other one moderate policy positions.
KW - Electoral competition
KW - Signaling
KW - Intuitive criterion
U2 - 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2019.07.005
DO - 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2019.07.005
M3 - Journal article
VL - 119
SP - 147
EP - 165
JO - European Economic Review
JF - European Economic Review
SN - 0014-2921
ER -