2019/07/02 by Doron Klunover, John Morgan, Klunover, Doron +1
Decision Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Computer science #Economics #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Epistemology #FOS: Economics and business #Game Theory and Applications #General Economics (econ.GN) #Law #Law and economics #Media Influence and Politics #Philosophy #Political science #Politics #Positive economics #Presidential system #Public opinion #Public relations #Quality (philosophy) #State (computer science) #econ.GN #q-fin.EC
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1907.01362
published in arXiv (Cornell University) (Cornell University)
openalex publication_date 2019/07/02 · arxiv created 2020/02/26 · arxiv updated 2020/02/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Presidential debates are viewed as providing an important public good by revealing information on candidates to voters. We consider an endogenous model of presidential debates in which an incumbent and a challenger (who is privately informed about her own quality) publicly announce whether they are willing to participate in a public debate, taking into account that a voter's choice of candidate depends on her beliefs regarding the candidates' qualities and on the state of nature.It is found that in equilibrium a debate occurs or does not occur independently of the challenger's quality and therefore the candidates' announcements are uninformative. This is because opting-out is perceived to be worse than losing a debate and therefore the challenger never refuses to participate.