Abstention, ideology and information acquisition

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Oliveros, Santiago
• 署名单位: University of London; Royal Holloway University London
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2012.10.006
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 871-902
• 关键词: Abstention; information acquisition; Heterogeneity

摘要

We consider an election in which each voter can collect information of different precision. Voters have asymmetric information and preferences that vary both in terms of ideology and intensity. In contrast to all other models of voting with endogenous information, in equilibrium voters collect information of different qualities. We show that information and abstention are not necessarily negatively correlated: some voters are more likely to abstain the more informed they are. We also discuss the manner in which incentives to acquire information are non-monotonic in terms of both ideology and the level of intensity. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.