IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-21-01126.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can fact-checkers discipline the government?

Author

Listed:
  • Samuel S. Santos

    (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul)

  • Marcelo C. Griebeler

    (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul)

Abstract

We study the potential of a fact-checker to deter a government from lying. The government wants to increase its acceptance by announcing that the state of the economy is good. The fact-checker must decide whether to check or not the government's announcement and then send a report to the public. We show that there is no separating equilibrium in which the government always reveals the true state of the economy. Moreover, there exist equilibria in which the government always announces that the state of the economy is good. This happens if the fact-checker has low credibility relative to that of the government. Our findings suggest that actions that discredit fact-checking agencies, such as calling them ``fake news", increase the chances of lying equilibria. If we allow mixed strategies, our analysis shows that, under quite intuitive conditions, the fact-checker can partially discipline the government.

Suggested Citation

  • Samuel S. Santos & Marcelo C. Griebeler, 2022. "Can fact-checkers discipline the government?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 42(3), pages 1498-1509.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-21-01126
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2022/Volume42/EB-22-V42-I3-P125.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fact-check; Misinformation; Signaling Game; Political Economy.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
    • C7 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory

    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:ebl:ecbull:eb-21-01126. 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: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.