The Swing Voter's Curse in Social Networks
Series
WiSo-HH Working Paper Series
Type
working paper
Date Issued
2016
Author(s)
Abstract
We study private communication between jury members who have to decide
between two policies in a majority vote. While interests of all agents are perfectly aligned, only some agents ("experts") receive a private noisy signal about which policy is correct. Each expert can, but need not, recommend a policy to her audience of "non-experts" prior to the vote. We show theoretically and empirically that communication can undermine (informational) efficiency of the vote and hence reduce welfare. Both efficiency and stability of communication hinge on the structure of the communication network. If some experts have distinctly larger audiences than others, non-experts should not follow their voting recommendation. We test the model in a lab experiment and find supporting evidence for this effect and, more generally, for the
importance of the network structure.
between two policies in a majority vote. While interests of all agents are perfectly aligned, only some agents ("experts") receive a private noisy signal about which policy is correct. Each expert can, but need not, recommend a policy to her audience of "non-experts" prior to the vote. We show theoretically and empirically that communication can undermine (informational) efficiency of the vote and hence reduce welfare. Both efficiency and stability of communication hinge on the structure of the communication network. If some experts have distinctly larger audiences than others, non-experts should not follow their voting recommendation. We test the model in a lab experiment and find supporting evidence for this effect and, more generally, for the
importance of the network structure.
Language
English
Keywords
Strategic Voting
Social Networks
Majority Rule
Swing Voter's Curse
Information Aggregation
Information Transmission
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
No
Publisher
Working Paper
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
245617
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open.access
Name
SVCnet_Swing_Voters_Curse_in_Social_Networks_2016_01.pdf
Size
2.48 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
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