IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jpbect/v22y2020i1p98-145.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

When the light shines too much: Rational inattention and pandering

Author

Listed:
  • Federico Trombetta

Abstract

Should voters always pay attention to politics? I explore the role of endogenous costly attention allocation in politics, combining insights from the growing literature on rational inattention with a standard model of political agency. I show that when attention to the action of the politician is endogenous, voters may choose to pay too much attention in equilibrium, and this induces too much political pandering. Moreover when attention to the action and to the state of the world are both endogenous, voters may not pay enough attention the state with respect to the ex ante optimum. A reduction in the total cost of attention does not correct this inefficiency and can even reduce welfare. This model can be a demand‐driven explanation of the under‐provision of analytical contents by news channels.

Suggested Citation

  • Federico Trombetta, 2020. "When the light shines too much: Rational inattention and pandering," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 22(1), pages 98-145, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:22:y:2020:i:1:p:98-145
    DOI: 10.1111/jpet.12402
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jpet.12402
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jpet.12402?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
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anqi Li & Lin Hu, 2020. "Electoral Accountability and Selection with Personalized Information Aggregation," Papers 2009.03761, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2023.
    2. Li, Anqi & Hu, Lin, 2023. "Electoral accountability and selection with personalized information aggregation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 296-315.
    3. Sergei Mikhalishchev & Vladimir Novak, 2024. "Inattention, Stability, and Reform Reluctance," Working and Discussion Papers WP 8/2024, Research Department, National Bank of Slovakia.
    4. Simon Lodato & Christos Mavridis & Federico Vaccari, 2024. "The Unelected Hand? Bureaucratic Influence and Electoral Accountability," Papers 2402.17526, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2024.
    5. Merzoni, Guido & Trombetta, Federico, 2022. "Pandering and state-specific costs of mismatch in political agency," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 132-143.
    6. Devdariani, Saba & Hirsch, Alexander V., 2023. "Voter attention and electoral accountability," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 224(C).
    7. Ian Ball & James Bono & Justin Grana & Nicole Immorlica & Brendan Lucier & Aleksandrs Slivkins, 2022. "Content Filtering with Inattentive Information Consumers," Papers 2205.14060, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2023.
    8. Bracco, Emanuele & Liberini, Federica & Lockwood, Ben & Porcelli, Francesco & Redoano, Michela & Sgroi, Daniel, 2021. "The Effects of Social Capital on Government Performance and Turnover : Theory and Evidence from Italian Municipalities," QAPEC Discussion Papers 04, Quantitative and Analytical Political Economy Research Centre.

    More about this item

    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:bla:jpbect:v:22:y:2020:i:1:p:98-145. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/apettea.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.