The FLAME Center for Economics & Public Policy (CEPP) cordially invites you to join a talk on "Lying for Votes" by Dr. Subhasish Dugar.

About the event: To what extent do pivotal nonpartisan voters believe and act upon potentially deceptive messages from partisan voters who privately observe candidates’ ex-ante fitness-for-office attributes? How do nonpartisan voters’ responses to messages vary with changing odds of candidates’ ex-ante suitability for office? This talk derives contrasting predictions regarding pivotal nonpartisan voters’ reactions to possibly untruthful messages across two-candidate voting competitions and tests them in the laboratory. We find that the partisan voters lie substantially more when candidates possess unequal than equal ex-ante odds of performing better in office. The inferior (superior) candidate’s base transmits more unfavorable (favorable) lies about their opponent (own) candidate. Facing candidates with different fitness-for-office odds, the nonpartisan voters largely ignore the message and vote for the ex-ante superior candidate. Yet, voting efficiency is lower in the competition with differentiated than undifferentiated candidates. We develop a behavioral framework, including lying aversion, to explain key features of our data.

http://subhasishdugar.weebly.com/
https://faculty.utah.edu/u6008419-SUBHASISH_DUGAR/research/index.hml