Social Welfare Effects of Transparency and Misinformation in a Political Economy

We present a game-theoretical model arguing that greater public transparency does not necessarily lead to higher social welfare. Political agents can benefit from providing citizens with misleading information aimed at aligning citizens’ choices with the political agents’ preferences. Citizens can l...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of agricultural and applied economics 2019-08, Vol.51 (3), p.485-494
Main Authors: Bullock, David S., Mittenzwei, Klaus, Josling, Timothy E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural economics
Antibiotics
Biohazards
Campylobacter
Civil society
Consumer organizations
Cost reduction
Costs
Decision making
Economic models
Election results
EU membership
False information
Food safety
Information processing
Interest groups
International relations
Internet
Labor unions
Negotiations
News media
Pathogens
Political economy
Politics
Poultry
Presidential elections
Referendums
Social networks
Transparency
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Summary:We present a game-theoretical model arguing that greater public transparency does not necessarily lead to higher social welfare. Political agents can benefit from providing citizens with misleading information aimed at aligning citizens’ choices with the political agents’ preferences. Citizens can lose from being fooled by political agents, though they can mitigate their losses by conducting costly inspections to detect false information. Producing and detecting false information is costly and can reduce social welfare.
ISSN:1074-0708
2056-7405
DOI:10.1017/aae.2019.17