 Common value elections with private information and informative priors: Theory and experimentsFriederike Mengel and Javier Rivas Games and Economic Behavior, 2017, vol. 104, issue C, 190-221 Abstract: We study efficiency and information aggregation in common value elections with contin-uous private signals and informative priors. We show that small elections are not generally efficient and that there are equilibria where some voters vote against their private signal even if it provides useful information and abstention is allowed. This is not the case in large elections, where the fraction of voters who vote against their private signal tends to zero. In an experiment, we then study how informativeness of priors and private signals impact efficiency and information aggregation in small elections. We find that there is a substantial amount of voting against the private signal. Moreover, while most experimental elections are efficient, we find that it is not generally the case that better private information leads to better decisions. Keywords: Voter turnout; Common value elections; Private information; Swing voter's curse; Condorcet Jury theorem (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:104:y:2017:i:c:p:190-221 DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2017.03.009 Access Statistics for this article Games and Economic Behavior is currently edited by E. Kalai More articles in Games and Economic Behavior from Elsevier |
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