Reputational Concerns in Common Value Elections

About this event

In common value elections, the mere act of voting signals a voter’s level of information, as informed voters vote for the correct state of the world whereas uninformed voters abstain, as famously proved by Feddersen and Pesendorfer (1996). If voters have reputational concerns, i.e., if they care to be perceived as “informed” by the rest of the voters, and they are selfish, then informed voters still vote informatively while uninformed voters may be also be tempted to participate ignoring the efficiency losses that this action might generate. We test the empirical relevance of the above argument through a laboratory experiment and find strong support for it. This finding suggests that reputational concerns might be a plausible explanation for the relatively frequent victories of suboptimal alternatives in elections.