"Personal Influence": Social Context and Political Competition

Andrea Galeotti () and Andrea Mattozzi ()

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2011, vol. 3, issue 1, 307-27

Abstract: This paper studies the effect of social learning on political outcomes in a model of informative campaign advertising. Voters' communication network affects parties' incentives to disclose political information, voters' learning about candidates running for office, and polarization of the electoral outcome. In richer communication networks, parties disclose less political information and voters are more likely to possess erroneous beliefs about the characteristics of the candidates. In turn, a richer communication network among voters may lead to political polarization. These results are reinforced when interpersonal communication occurs more frequently among ideologically homogeneous individuals and parties can target political advertising.(JEL D72, D85, M37, Z13)

JEL-codes: D72 D85 M37 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
Note: DOI: 10.1257/mic.3.1.307
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/mic.3.1.307 (application/pdf)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/mic/app/2009-0037_app.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Personal Influence: Social Context and Political Competition (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aejmic:v:3:y:2011:i:1:p:307-27

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics is currently edited by Johannes Hörner

More articles in American Economic Journal: Microeconomics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().