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PRUDENCE AND SUCCESS IN POLITICS
Author(s) -
CADOT OLIVIER,
SINCLAIRDESGAGNÉ BERNARD
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
economics and politics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1468-0343
pISSN - 0954-1985
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0343.1992.tb00061.x
Subject(s) - prudence , outcome (game theory) , politics , bayesian game , voter model , simple (philosophy) , term (time) , economics , class (philosophy) , bayesian probability , mathematical economics , microeconomics , repeated game , game theory , political science , computer science , mathematics , artificial intelligence , law , epistemology , philosophy , statistics , physics , quantum mechanics
The paper considers a repeated election game between an infinitely‐lived representative voter and finitely‐lived, heterogeneous politicians. The voter's prior belief about the incumbent's competency is updated during the incumbent's first term in office. The voter's problem is to find a rule that simultaneously selects and controls politicians. We show that the simple performance rule, standard in the literature, is justified as a time‐consistent rule for a forward‐looking voter. The outcome of a large class of perfect equilibria is “strategic caution”: incumbent politicians slow down the voter's Bayesian learning by taking only weakly informative actions.