IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejmic/v18y2026i2p293-312.html

Voter Information and Distributive Politics

Author

Listed:
  • Benjamin Blumenthal

Abstract

Does more information benefit voters? I examine this question in a novel setting of distributive politics and electoral accountability. Homogeneously informed electorates can benefit from less information through improvements in the control or screening of politicians. For heterogeneously informed electorates, I show that the distribution of resources and voter welfare is affected by the nature of informational heterogeneity and by voters' ability to communicate with each other, making less-informed voters better off than their more-informed counterparts in some cases.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin Blumenthal, 2026. "Voter Information and Distributive Politics," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 18(2), pages 293-312, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejmic:v:18:y:2026:i:2:p:293-312
    DOI: 10.1257/mic.20240340
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mic.20240340
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/24970
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/mic.20240340?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • H50 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejmic:v:18:y:2026:i:2:p:293-312. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.