Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
7369665 Journal of Public Economics 2018 50 Pages PDF
Abstract
We conduct an experiment to characterize the “expressive” voting behavior of political partisans. We find that participants who are asked to vote on the answer to factual questions tend to offer more partisan responses than those who must answer as decisive individuals. We further test whether voters exploit corrective information that sometimes challenges their partisan views. When information is available, we observe smaller partisan gaps and more correct responses, especially when the information is free. When information is costly to acquire, we find that voters generally choose to remain uninformed, consistent with the Downsian theory of rational ignorance.
Related Topics
Social Sciences and Humanities Economics, Econometrics and Finance Economics and Econometrics
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