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

Melis Kartal and Jean-Robert Tyran

No 20-03, Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics

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 study extensions that allow for partisan biases, targeted misinformation intended to move public opinion in a specific direction, and correlated news signals (due to for example media ownership concentration). In our experiment, voters are exposed to correct news or misinformation. The extent to which a subject is likely to observe correct news depends on their cognitive ability. Absent overconfidence, more cognitively able subjects are predicted to vote while less able subjects are predicted to abstain, and information is predicted to aggregate well. We provide evidence that overconfidence induces misinformed subjects to vote excessively, thereby severly undermining information aggregation.

Keywords: behavioral political economy; voting; misinformation; Dunning-Kruger effect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D83 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-08-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Fake News, Voter Overconfidence, and the Quality of Democratic Choice (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kud:kuiedp:2003

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