Debating over efficiency-enhancing but inequality-increasing reforms accounts for the routine business of democratic institutions. Fernandez and Rodrik (1991) hold that anti-reform bias can be attributed to individual-specific uncertainty regarding the distribution of gains and losses resulting...

How does communication among voters affect turnout? In a laboratory experiment, subjects, divided into two competing parties, choose between costly voting and abstaining. Pre-play communication treatments, relative to the No Communication control, are Public Communication (subjects exchange...

More voters than ever get political news from their friends on social media platforms. Is this bad for democracy? Using context-neutral laboratory experiments, we find that biased (mis)information shared on social networks affects the quality of collective decisions relatively more than does...