Inverse Campaigning

Konrad, Kai A.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.395402

Download This Paper

Open PDF in Browser

Add Paper to My Library

Inverse Campaigning

23 Pages Posted: 15 Apr 2003

See all articles by Kai A. Konrad

Kai A. Konrad

Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research); IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Date Written: April 2003

Abstract

It can be advantageous for an office motivated party A to spend effort to make it public that a group of voters will lose from party A's policy proposal. Such effort is called inverse campaigning. The inverse campaigning equilibria are described for the case where the two parties can simultaneously reveal information publicly to uninformed voters. Inverse campaigning dissipates the parties' rents and causes some inefficiency in expectation. Inverse campaigning also influences policy design. Successful policy proposals hurt small groups of voters who lose much and do not benefit small groups of voters who win much.

Keywords: Inverse Campaigning, Information, Voting, Policy Design

JEL Classification: D72, D74, E61

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Konrad, Kai A., Inverse Campaigning (April 2003). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=395402 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.395402