Fake News, Voter Overconfidence, and the Quality of Democratic Choice

Melis Kartal and Jean-Robert Tyran

American Economic Review, 2022, vol. 112, issue 10, 3367-97

Abstract: This paper studies, theoretically and experimentally, the effects of overconfidence and fake news on information aggregation and the quality of democratic choice in a common-interest setting. We theoretically show that overconfidence exacerbates the adverse effects of widespread misinformation (i.e., fake news). We then analyze richer models that allow for partisanship, targeted misinformation intended to sway public opinion, and news signals correlated across voters (due to media ownership concentration or censorship). In our experiment, overconfidence severely undermines information aggregation, suggesting that the effect of overconfidence can be much more pronounced at the collective than at the individual level.

JEL-codes: C91 D12 D72 D82 D83 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Working Paper: Fake News, Voter Overconfidence, and the Quality of Democratic Choice (2020)
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DOI: 10.1257/aer.20201844

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