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.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: cege Discussion Papers ; No. 252

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
Public Goods
Thema
accountability
elections
information
jury theorem

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Aytimur, R. Emre
Bruns, Christian
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
University of Göttingen, Center for European, Governance and Economic Development Research (cege)
(wo)
Göttingen
(wann)
2015

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:42 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Aytimur, R. Emre
  • Bruns, Christian
  • University of Göttingen, Center for European, Governance and Economic Development Research (cege)

Entstanden

  • 2015

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