Whether candidate 1 or candidate 2 is elected depends on the votes of two
citizens. The economy may be in one of two states, \(A\) and \(B\). The citizens
agree that candidate 1 is best if the state is \(A\) and candidate 2 is best if
the state is \(B\). Each citizen's preferences are represented by the expected
value of a Bernoulli payoff function that assigns a payoff of 1 if the best
candidate for the state wins (obtains more votes than the other candidate), a
payoff of 0 if the other candidate wins, and payoff of \(\frac{1}{2}\) if the
candidates tie. Citizen 1 is informed of the state, whereas citizen 2 believes
it is \(A\) with probability \(0.9\) and \(B\) with probability 0.1. Each citizen
may either vote for candidate 1 , vote for candidate 2 , or not vote.
a. Formulate this situation as a Bayesian game. (Construct the table of
payoffs for each state.)
b. Show that the game has exactly two pure Nash equilibria, in one of which
citizen 2 does not vote and in the other of which she votes for 1 .
c. Show that one of the player's actions in the second of these equilibria is
weakly dominated.
d. Why is the "swing voter's curse" an appropriate name for the determinant of
citizen 2 's decision in the second equilibrium?