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Information structures and information aggregation in threshold equilibria in elections

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Abstract

I study a model of information aggregation in elections with multiple states and multiple signals. I focus on threshold equilibria and completely characterize information aggregation in this class. In particular, I identify conditions on the distributions of signals that are necessary and sufficient for information aggregation in every sequence of threshold equilibria, as well as simple conditions that are sufficient but not necessary for information aggregation in threshold equilibria. I also identify (generic) conditions that are necessary and sufficient for information not to be aggregated in any sequence of threshold equilibria. As a consequence, my analysis provides sufficient conditions for the existence of equilibria that do not aggregate information.

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  1. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Svetlana Kosterina

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  1. Svetlana Kosterina
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Correspondence to Svetlana Kosterina.

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I am indebted to my adviser, Wolfgang Pesendorfer, for his invaluable guidance and support. I am grateful to Faruk Gul and Germán Gieczewski for very useful discussions and advice. For helpful conversations and comments, I would like to thank Renee Bowen, Ying Chen, Wioletta Dziuda, Benjamin Ogden, Santiago Oliveros, Nicola Persico and Andrea Prat. I also would like to thank the audiences at the 2019 North American Summer Meeting of the Econometric Society (Seattle, Washington), the 30th International Conference on Game Theory (Stony Brook University, 2019), American Political Science Association Meeting 2019 (Washington, DC), and seminar audiences at Princeton for their comments.

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Kosterina, S. Information structures and information aggregation in threshold equilibria in elections. Econ Theory 75, 493–522 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00199-022-01412-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00199-022-01412-w

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