Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-t6hkb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T15:59:18.207Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Asymmetric Information and the Coherence of Legislation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

David Austen-Smith  and
William H. Riker
David Austen-Smith
Affiliation:
University of Rochester
William H. Riker
Affiliation:
University of Rochester
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Legislators' beliefs, preferences, and intentions are communicated in committees and legislatures through debates, the proposal of bills and amendments, and the recording of votes. Because such information is typically distributed asymmetrically within any group of decision makers, legislators have incentives to reveal or conceal private information strategically and thus manipulate the collective decision-making process in their favor. In consequence, any committee decision may in the end reflect only the interests of a minority. We address a problem of sharing information through debate in an endogenous, agenda-setting, collective-choice process. The model is game theoretic and we find in the equilibrium to the game that at least some legislators have incentives to conceal private information. Consequently, the final committee decision can be “incoherent” by failing to reflect the preferences of all committee members fully. Additionally, we characterize the subset of legislators with any incentive to conceal data.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 81 , Issue 3 , September 1987 , pp. 897 - 918
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Banks, Jeffrey, and Sobel, Joel. 1987. Equilibrium Selection in Signaling Games. Econometrica 55:647–62.Google Scholar
Black, Duncan. 1958. The Theory of Committees and Elections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Calvert, Randall. 1986. Models of Imperfect Information in Politics. London: Harwood Academic.Google Scholar
Crawford, Vincent, and Sobel, Joel. 1982. Strategic Information Transmission. Econometrica 50:1431–51.Google Scholar
Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Gal-Or, Esther. 1985. Information Sharing in Oligopoly. Econometrica 53:329–44.Google Scholar
Gal-Or, Esther. 1986. Information Transmission—Cournot and Bertrand Equilibria. Review of Economic Studies 53:85–92.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Bruce. 1985. Lies, Damned Lies, and the Income of the Elderly. Public Policy Analysis Program DP-8506. University of Rochester. Typescript.Google Scholar
McKelvey, Richard, and Niemi, Richard. 1978. A Multistage Game Representation of Sophisticated Voting for Binary Procedures. Journal of Economic Theory 18:1–22.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1910. Utilitarianism, Liberty, and Representative Government. London: J. M. Dent and Sons.Google Scholar
Milton, John. 1927. Areopagitica. London: J. M. Dent and Sons.Google Scholar
Ordeshook, Peter, and Palfrey, Thomas. 1985. Sophisticated Voting with Incomplete Information. Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie-Mellon University. Typescript.Google Scholar
Selten, Reinhard. 1975. Reexamination of the Perfectness Concept for Equilibrium Points in Extensive Form Games. International Journal of Game Theory 4:25–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.