Expert advice to a voting body

Keith E. Schnakenberg

Journal of Economic Theory, 2015, vol. 160, issue C, 102-113

Abstract: I provide a theory of information transmission in collective choice settings. In the model, an expert has private information on the effect of a policy proposal and communicates to a set of voters prior to a vote over whether or not to implement the proposal. In contrast to previous game-theoretic models of political communication, the results apply to situations involving multiple voters, multidimensional policy spaces and a broad class of voting rules. The results highlight how experts can use information to manipulate collective choices in a way that reduces the ex ante expected utilities of all voters. Opportunities for expert manipulation are the result of collective choice instability: all voting rules that allow collective preference cycles also allow welfare-reducing manipulative persuasion by an expert. The results challenge prevailing theories of institutions in which procedures are designed to maximize information transmission.

Keywords: Signaling; Cheap talk; Social choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D70 D71 D72 D78 D82 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:160:y:2015:i:c:p:102-113

DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2015.08.005

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