Signal Jamming and Fake News in Electoral Competition
Final Report Abstract
All in all, the present project lead to some interesting new insights. One of them is the backfiring result when institutions against fake news become more rigorous. The respective analysis also stresses that the kind of competitive environment (e.g., presidential versus parliamentary election) crucially influences the conditions for backfiring and whether only one politician or both are involved in backfiring. In addition, fake news can only lead to welfare implications if combining electoral competition with cognitive biases of voters. In such a setting, limiting politicians’ media access and educating voters can be very fruitful policies to fight negative welfare effects of fake news. Finally, the project has shown that future work should not concentrate on single aspects of fake news in isolation (e.g., its influence on the quality of candidate selection), but should comprise all possible welfare effects, including political polarization. In addition, future work should also consider the long-term effects that result from the interrelationship between information manipulation via fake news, the quality of candidate selection, and the polarization of political attitudes.
Publications
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Correlation neglect, incentives, and welfare. Economics Letters, 192, 109171.
Klümper, Andreas & Kräkel, Matthias
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Information manipulation and competition. Games and Economic Behavior, 131, 245-263.
Grunewald, Andreas & Kräkel, Matthias
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The fragility of specialized advice. Discussion Paper. (Former title: Fake experts.)
Lahr, P. & J. Winkelmann
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ON THE IMPACT OF INFORMATION MANIPULATION IN DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS. International Economic Review, 66(3), 1043-1077.
Grunewald, Andreas; Klümper, Andreas & Kräkel, Matthias
