An Evolutionary Analysis of Turnout With Conformist Citizens

Massimiliano Landi and Mauro Sodini

No 25-2010, Working Papers from Singapore Management University, School of Economics

Abstract: We propose an evolutionary analysis of a voting game where citizens have a preference for conformism that adds to the instrumental preference for the electoral outcome. Multiple equilibria arise, and some generate high turnout. Simulations of best response dynamics show that high turnout is asymptotically stable if conformism matters but its likelihood depends on the reference group for conformism: high turnout is more likely when voters care about their own group's choice, as this better overrides the free rider problem of voting games. Comparative statics on the voting cost distribution, the population's size or the groups' composition are also done.

Keywords: Turnout; Turnout; coordination games; Poisson games; conformism; selection dynamics. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C73 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2010-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-evo, nep-gth and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in SMU Economics and Statistics Working Paper Series

Downloads: (external link)
https://mercury.smu.edu.sg/rsrchpubupload/18078/TurnoutDinamicoWP.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Server closed connection without sending any data back

Related works:
Journal Article: An evolutionary analysis of turnout with conformist citizens (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:siu:wpaper:25-2010

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Singapore Management University, School of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by QL THor ().