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Electoral Competition with Fake News

Author

Listed:
  • Gene M. Grossman

    (Princeton University)

  • Elhanan Helpman

    (Harvard University)

Abstract

Misinformation pervades political competition. We introduce opportunities for political candidates and their media supporters to spread fake news about the policy environment and perhaps about parties’ positions into a familiar model of electoral competition. In the baseline model with full information, the parties’ positions converge to those that maximize aggregate welfare. When parties can broadcast fake news to audiences that disproportionately include their partisans, policy divergence and suboptimal outcomes can result. We study a sequence of models that impose progressively tighter constraints on false reporting and characterize situations that lead to divergence and a polarized electorate.

Suggested Citation

  • Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 2020. "Electoral Competition with Fake News," Working Papers 2020-11, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    • Handle: RePEc:pri:econom:2020-11
    as

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    File URL: https://www.princeton.edu/~grossman/fakenews.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Samuel S. Santos & Marcelo C. Griebeler, 2022. "Can fact-checkers discipline the government?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 42(3), pages 1498-1509.
    2. Kishishita, Daiki, 2025. "Inequality, conspiracy theories, and redistribution," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    3. Aziz, Abeer Ibtisam & Bischoff, Ivo, 2025. "Social media campaigning and voter behavior–evidence for the German federal election 2021," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    4. Liberini, Federica & Redoano, Michela & Russo, Antonio & Cuevas, Angel & Cuevas, Ruben, 2025. "Politics in the facebook era. Evidence from the 2016 US presidential elections," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    5. Yohei Yamaguchi & Ken Yahagi, 2024. "Law enforcement and political misinformation," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 36(1), pages 3-36, January.
    6. Dana Sisak & Philipp Denter, 2024. "Truth, Lies, and Social Ties: When Image Concerns Fuel Fake News," Papers 2410.19557, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2025.
    7. Rozo, Sandra V. & Vargas, Juan F., 2021. "Brothers or invaders? How crisis-driven migrants shape voting behavior," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    8. Gradwohl, Ronen & Heller, Yuval & Hillman, Arye, 2025. "How social media can undermine democracy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    9. Calum M. Carmichael, 2025. "Political representation in an era of income inequality and post-truth politics," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 171-199, June.

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    JEL classification:

    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation

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