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 AER - June 2007

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American Economic Review

Vol. 97, No. 3, June 2007

Signaling Character in Electoral Competition
Navin Kartik and R. Preston McAfee

Article Citation
Kartik, Navin, and R. Preston McAfee 2007. "Signaling Character in Electoral Competition." American Economic Review, 97(3): 852–870.
DOI:10.1257/aer.97.3.852

Abstract
We study a one-dimensional Hotelling-Downs model of electoral competition with the following innovation: a fraction of candidates have "character" and are exogenously committed to a campaign platform; this is unobservable to voters. Character is desirable, and a voter's utility is a convex combination of standard policy preferences and her assessment of a candidate's character. This structure induces a signaling game between strategic candidates and voters, since a policy platform affects voters' utilities not only directly, but also indirectly through inferences about a candidate's character. The model generates a number of predictions, starting with a failure of the median voter theorem. (JEL D72, D82)

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Authors
Kartik, Navin
McAfee, R. Preston