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  5. Fake News, Voter Overconfidence, and the Quality of Democratic Choice

Fake News, Voter Overconfidence, and the Quality of Democratic Choice

  • Melis Kartal
  • Jean-Robert Tyran
American Economic Review
vol. 112, no. 10, October 2022
(pp. 3367-97)
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Abstract

This paper studies, theoretically and experimentally, the effects of overconfidence and fake news on information aggregation and the quality of democratic choice in a common-interest setting. We theoretically show that overconfidence exacerbates the adverse effects of widespread misinformation (i.e., fake news). We then analyze richer models that allow for partisanship, targeted misinformation intended to sway public opinion, and news signals correlated across voters (due to media ownership concentration or censorship). In our experiment, overconfidence severely undermines information aggregation, suggesting that the effect of overconfidence can be much more pronounced at the collective than at the individual level.

Citation

Kartal, Melis, and Jean-Robert Tyran. 2022. "Fake News, Voter Overconfidence, and the Quality of Democratic Choice." American Economic Review, 112 (10): 3367-97. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20201844

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • C91 Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual
  • D12 Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
  • D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
  • D82 Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
  • D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
  • L82 Entertainment; Media