This paper examines competition in a spatial model of two-candidate elections, where one candidate enjoys a quality advantage over the other candidate. The candidates care about winning and also have policy preferences. There is two-dimensional private information. Candidate ideal points as well as their tradeoffs between policy preferences and winning are private information. The distribution of this two-dimensional type is common knowledge. The location of the median voter's ideal point is uncertain, with a distribution that is commonly known by both candidates. Pure strategy equilibria always exist in this model. We characterize the effects of increased uncertainty about the median voter, the effect of candidate policy preferences, and the effects of changes in the distribution of private information. We prove that the distribution of candidate policies approaches the mixed equilibrium of Aragones and Palfrey (2002a), when both candidates' weights on policy preferences go to zero.
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Paper provided by California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences in its series Working Papers with number
1169.
Length: 21 pages Date of creation: May 2003 Date of revision: Publication status: Published: Handle: RePEc:clt:sswopa:1169
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Enriqueta Aragones & Thomas R. Palfrey & Andrew Postlewaite, 2005.
"Reputation and Rhetoric in Elections,"
PIER Working Paper Archive
05-021, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
[Downloadable!]
Other versions:
Enriqueta Aragonès & Thomas R. Palfrey & Andrew Postlewaite, 2005.
"Reputation and Rhetoric in Elections,"
PIER Working Paper Archive
05-027, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 01 Sep 2005.
[Downloadable!]