The fragility of information aggregation in large elections

Michael Mandler

Games and Economic Behavior, 2012, vol. 74, issue 1, 257-268

Abstract: In a common-values election where voters receive a signal about which candidate is superior, suppose there is a small amount of uncertainty about the conditional likelihood of the signalʼs outcome, given the correct candidate. Once this uncertainty is resolved, the signal is i.i.d. across agents. Information can then fail to aggregate. The candidate less likely to be correct given agentsʼ signals can be elected with probability near 1 in a large electorate even if the distribution of signal likelihoods is arbitrarily near to a classical model where agents are certain that a particular likelihood obtains given that a specific candidate is correct.

Keywords: Information aggregation; Elections; Common values; Exchangeability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:74:y:2012:i:1:p:257-268

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2011.03.004

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