Persuading Voters

S-Tier
Journal: American Economic Review
Year: 2016
Volume: 106
Issue: 11
Pages: 3590-3605

Authors (2)

Score contribution per author:

4.022 = (α=2.01 / 2 authors) × 4.0x S-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

In a symmetric information voting model, an individual (politician) can influence voters' choices by strategically designing a policy experiment (public signal). We characterize the politician's optimal experiment. With a nonunanimous voting rule, she exploits voters' heterogeneity by designing an experiment with realizations targeting different winning coalitions. Consequently, under a simple-majority rule, a majority of voters might be strictly worse off due to the politician's influence. We characterize voters' preferences over electoral rules and provide conditions for a majority of voters to prefer a supermajority (or unanimity) voting rule, in order to induce the politician to supply a more informative experiment.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:aea:aecrev:v:106:y:2016:i:11:p:3590-3605
Journal Field
General
Author Count
2
Added to Database
2026-01-24