Voter Information and Distributive Politics, 2024

I consider a series of models of political agency with moral hazard and adverse selection, in which politicians allocate resources to voters. Within these models, which combine electoral accountability and distributive politics, I ask: is more information good for voters? With homogeneously informed electorates, I first show how and when less information can benefit voters, through the interaction of both partial control and partial screening effects. Building on this mechanism, I subsequently consider heterogeneously informed electorates and ask: how can voters’ welfare be affected by the informational advantage of a few voters? Is it better to be among the more informed few or the less informed many? I show that the ability of more informed voters to communicate with less informed voters and the nature of their informational advantage can play a significant role in affecting voters’ welfare by influencing politicians’ incentives to allocate resources to specific voters.

This paper previously circulated under the title "Is More Information Good for Voters?"

Conferences and Seminars: 17th meeting of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare*, EAYE Annual Meeting*, Ludwig Erhard ifo Conference on Institutional Economics 2024, 1st UniCatt Political Economy Workshop, 1st Bocconi/Carlo Alberto/Cornell Political Economy Workshop, ENS Lyon Junior Workshop, ETH/CEPR 2023 Workshop on Democracy, EWMES 2022, EPSA 2022 Annual Conference, PET 2022, IOEA 2022, RES 2022 Annual Conference, MPSA 2022 Annual Conference, LSE’s PSPE WIP Seminar, 15th RGS Doctoral Conference, Virtual Formal Theory Workshop, ADRES 2022 Doctoral Conference, 14th PhD Workshop in Economics at Collegio Carlo Alberto/Unito, AMSE’s Theory Seminar, PSE’s TOM and PhD Seminars.

* denotes scheduled presentation(s)