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When the light shines too much: Rational inattention and pandering
Author(s) -
Trombetta Federico
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of public economic theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.809
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1467-9779
pISSN - 1097-3923
DOI - 10.1111/jpet.12402
Subject(s) - inefficiency , economics , ex ante , politics , welfare , agency (philosophy) , action (physics) , microeconomics , state (computer science) , public economics , macroeconomics , law , market economy , political science , sociology , social science , physics , algorithm , quantum mechanics , computer science
Should voters always pay attention to politics? I explore the role of endogenous costly attention allocation in politics, combining insights from the growing literature on rational inattention with a standard model of political agency. I show that when attention to the action of the politician is endogenous, voters may choose to pay too much attention in equilibrium, and this induces too much political pandering. Moreover when attention to the action and to the state of the world are both endogenous, voters may not pay enough attention the state with respect to the ex ante optimum. A reduction in the total cost of attention does not correct this inefficiency and can even reduce welfare. This model can be a demand‐driven explanation of the under‐provision of analytical contents by news channels.