Frisell, Lars () (Research Department, Central Bank of Sweden)
Abstract
In their pursuit of being elected, politicians might not provide their constituents with independent viewpoints, but just try to outguess popular opinion. Although rational voters see through such populism, candidates can not resist resorting to it when the spoils of office are too large. For an intermediate parameter range, both populism and its opposite, “candor”, can be sustained as equilibria. This means that the public’s trust or distrust in politicians may be self-fulfilling prophecies. Importantly, the more informed politicians are about public opinion, the more likely it is that populist behavior can be avoided.
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden) in its series Working Paper Series with number
166.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Paul Heidhues & Johan Lagerlöf, 2000.
"Hiding Information in Electoral Competition,"
CIG Working Papers
FS IV 00-06, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), Research Unit: Competition and Innovation (CIG), revised Feb 2002.
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