The Fragility of Information Aggregation in Large Elections
Games and Economic Behavior (Forthcoming)
33 Pages Posted: 31 Oct 2008 Last revised: 26 Apr 2013
Date Written: June 2011
Abstract
In a common-values election where voters receive a signal about which candidate is superior, suppose there is a small amount of uncertainty about the likelihood of the signal's outcome, holding fixed the correct candidate. Once this uncertainty is resolved, the signal is i.i.d. across agents. Information can then fail to aggregate. The candidate less likely to be correct given agents' signals can be elected with probability near 1 in a large electorate even if the distribution of signal likelihoods is arbitrarily near to a classical model where agents are certain that a particular likelihood obtains given that a specific candidate is correct.
Keywords: information aggregation, elections, common values, exchangeability
JEL Classification: C72, D72
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation