Published In
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-1-2025
Abstract
How much do opposing news sources distort private information and how do voters use distorted contradictory information regarding candidate quality? In a two candidate voting game, we derive and experimentally test an “average-opinion” hypothesis, where two opposingly biased sources, capable of forming an unbiased estimate of candidate quality as well as a distorted estimate within a bound, symmetrically distort their reported estimates in opposite directions, and voters split the estimate difference to decipher the unbiased estimate. Data support the hypothesis and show that voters benefit from sources’ competition, compared to a control treatment without competition. When sources are allowed to distort unrestrictedly, babbling equilibrium is predicted, but results still indicate the average-opinion behavior. Finally, even when sources are asymmetric in their ability to distort, voters perform remarkably well to form an adjusted average-opinion, which allows them to vote for the right candidate.
Rights
© Copyright the author(s) 2025
DOI
10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107303
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/44293
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Citation Details
Mitra, A., & Shahriar, Q. (2025). Voting under contradictory news. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 240, 107303.
Description
This is the author’s version of a work that was ac ccepted for publication in Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published as: Voting under contradictory news. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 240, 107303.