Information and Voting: the Wisdom of the Experts versus the Wisdom of the Masses

Joseph McMurray ()

No WP59, Wallis Working Papers from University of Rochester - Wallis Institute of Political Economy

Abstract: In a common-values election with continuously distributed information quality, the incentive to pool private information conflicts with the swing voters curse. In equilibrium, therefore, some citizens abstain despite clear private opinions, and others vote despite having arbitrarily many peers with superior information. The dichotomy between one's own and others' information quality can explain the otherwise puzzling empirical relationship between education and turnout, and suggests the importance of relative information variables in explaining turnout, which I verify for U.S. primary elections. Though voluntary elections fail to utilize nonvoters' information, mandatory elections actually do worse; e¤orts to motivate turnout may actually reduce welfare.

Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2008-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-cta and nep-pol
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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