Learning about challengers

Odilon Câmara and Dan Bernhardt

Games and Economic Behavior, 2015, vol. 90, issue C, 181-206

Abstract: We examine a political agency problem in repeated elections where an incumbent runs against a challenger from the opposing party, whose policy preferences are unknown by voters. We first ask: do voters benefit from attracting a pool of challengers with more moderate ideologies? When voters and politicians are patient, moderating the ideology distribution of centrist and moderate politicians (those close to the median voter) reduces voter welfare by reducing an extreme incumbent's incentives to compromise. We then ask: do voters benefit from informative signals about a challenger's true ideology? We prove that giving voters informative, but sufficiently noisy, signals always harm voters, because they make it harder for incumbents to secure re-election.

Keywords: Political agency; Repeated elections; Interest groups (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C73 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:90:y:2015:i:c:p:181-206

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2015.02.013

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