Elections, Private Information, and State-Dependent Candidate Quality

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In this paper we contribute to the study of how democracy works when politicians are better informed than the electorate about conditions relevant for policy choice. We do so by setting up and analyzing a game theoretic model of electoral competition. An important feature of the model is that candidate quality is state-dependent. Our main insight is that if the electorate is sufficiently well informed then there exists an equilibrium where the candidates' policy positions reveal their information and the policy outcome is the same as it would be if voters were fully informed (the median policy in the true state of the world)
Original languageEnglish
PublisherDepartment of Economics, University of Copenhagen
Number of pages21
Publication statusPublished - 2007

    Research areas

  • Faculty of Social Sciences - electoral competition, uncertainty, private information, candidate quality, revealing equilibria

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ID: 877358