Arbeitspapier
On ignorant voters and busy politicians
We show that a large electorate of ignorant voters can succeed in establishing high levels of electoral accountability. In our model an incumbent politician is confronted with a large number of voters who receive very noisy signals about her performance. We find that the accountability problem can be solved well in the sense that the incumbent exerts effort as if she faced a social planner who receives a perfect signal about her performance. Our results thus shed light on another potential blessing of large electorates in addition to information aggregation as postulated by the jury theorem.
- Language
-
Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
-
Series: cege Discussion Papers ; No. 252
- Classification
-
Wirtschaft
Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
Public Goods
- Subject
-
accountability
elections
information
jury theorem
- Event
-
Geistige Schöpfung
- (who)
-
Aytimur, R. Emre
Bruns, Christian
- Event
-
Veröffentlichung
- (who)
-
University of Göttingen, Center for European, Governance and Economic Development Research (cege)
- (where)
-
Göttingen
- (when)
-
2015
- Handle
- Last update
-
10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET
Data provider
This object is provided by:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Object type
- Arbeitspapier
Associated
- Aytimur, R. Emre
- Bruns, Christian
- University of Göttingen, Center for European, Governance and Economic Development Research (cege)
Time of origin
- 2015
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