Fake News, Voter Overconfidence, and the Quality of Democratic Choice†

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kartal, Melis; Tyran, Jean-Robert
• 署名单位: Vienna University of Economics & Business; University of Vienna; University of Copenhagen
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20201844
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 3367-3397
• 关键词: Information aggregation; Abstention; ELECTIONS; thinking; beliefs; false

摘要

This paper studies , theoretically and experimentally , the effects of overconfidence and fake news on information aggregation and the quality of democratic choice in a common-interest setting. We theo-retically show that overconfidence exacerbates the adverse effects of widespread misinformation (i.e. , fake news). We then analyze richer models that allow for partisanship , targeted misinformation intended to sway public opinion , and news signals correlated across voters (due to media ownership concentration or censorship). In our exper-iment , overconfidence severely undermines information aggregation , suggesting that the effect of overconfidence can be much more pro-nounced at the collective than at the individual level. (JEL C91, D12, D72, D82, D83, L82)