Condorcet Jury Theorem or Rational Ignorance

Minoru Kitahara () and Yohei Sekiguchi

Journal of Public Economic Theory, 2008, vol. 10, issue 2, pages 281-300

Abstract: We analyze a symmetric model of an election in which voters are uncertain about which of two alternatives is desirable for them. Each voter must incur some cost to acquire information about the alternatives. We show that by focusing on unbiased voting strategies, general symmetric signal structures can be degenerated to a two-signal model. In addition, we show that for any sequence of unbiased voting equilibria, if the second-order derivative of the information cost function at no information is zero, then the probability of electing the desirable alternative converges to one, that is, the Condorcet Jury Theorem is valid. Otherwise, this probability converges to some value less than one; that is, the "rational ignorance" hypothesis is valid. Copyright 2008 Blackwell Publishing, Inc..

Date: 2008

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