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Full-Text Articles in Public Economics

Professional Advice From Randomly Transparent Committees, Saptarshi P. Ghosh, Jaideep Roy Jan 2012

Professional Advice From Randomly Transparent Committees, Saptarshi P. Ghosh, Jaideep Roy

Saptarshi P Ghosh

This paper studies voting behaviour of careerist experts (who have expertise in three independent and equally important dimensions) in a secret committee where voting profiles get `leaked' to the public with an exogenously given probability. We focus on \emph{informative} voting, where every expert votes in accordance to his privately formed posterior probability and \emph{social welfare}, which is the ex-ante gain of the society from a correct decision in every dimension. We show that for informative voting to be obtained as an equilibrium outcome, it is important that the committee uses the unanimity voting rule along with an intermediate probability of …


Media Persuasion And Voter Welfare, Saptarshi P. Ghosh, Jaideep Roy, Peter Postl Jan 2012

Media Persuasion And Voter Welfare, Saptarshi P. Ghosh, Jaideep Roy, Peter Postl

Saptarshi P Ghosh

We study information transmission where an informed media, whose interests are partially in conflict with a finite group of rational voters, transmits news items in an attempt to manipulate democratic decisions. In a common-interest two-alternative voting model where due to reputation concerns the media can credibly commit to send any news reliably, we show that even if voters welcome the news when it arrives, media's presence can hurt their ex-ante welfare in both large and small constituencies.