This thesis contributes to the study of the role of information in elections and public
policy formation. Its main focus is on information acquisition and voting behaviour.
Chapter 1 discusses the motivation of this research and presents a survey of related
literature. Chapter 2 focuses on electoral turnout, Chapter 3 on public policy, and
Chapter 4 on mass media.
Chapter 2 studies the impact of information on electoral turnout. Since incentives to
be informed are correlated with other incentives to participate in public life, a model
of information acquisition and turnout is introduced to isolate potential instrumental
variables and try to establish a causal relation. Results are tested on the 1997 General
Election in Britain. It is shown that information, as well as ideology, matters for
turnout. It also contributes to explain the systematic correlation of turnout with
variables like education and income. Voters' knowledge of candidates and of other
political issues is also substantially influenced by mass media.
Chapter 3 presents a model that links the distribution of political knowledge with
redistributive policies. It argues that voters can have private incentives to be informed
about politics and that such incentives are correlated with income. Therefore
redistribution will be systematically lower than what the median voter theorem
predicts. Moreover, more inequality does not necessarily lead to an increase in
redistribution and constitutional restrictions might have unintended consequences.
In Chapter 4 it is argued that instrumentally motivated voters should increase their
demand for information when elections are close. In supplying news, mass media
should take into account information demand, as well as the value of customers to
advertisers and the cost of reaching marginal readers. Information supply should
therefore be larger in electoral constituencies where the contest is expected to be
closer, the population is on average more valuable for advertisers, and the population
density is higher. These conclusions are then tested with good results on data from the
1997 General Election in Britain