Book Explains and Provides Interesting Insights Into Voter Behavior

One of the most important voter information problems is lack of information about the consequences of the policies they advocate. Phillip Nelson’s book titled “Good Intentions — Bad Consequences: Voters’ Information Problems” (published by AuthorHouse in March 2017) is a new approach of understanding voter choice. It explains a lot of behavior otherwise unexplained.

The book contrasts the behavior of two sets of voters: those who want to do “good” but are unaware of the unintended consequences of their actions, and the aggregate of the self-interest of others. In both cases, many voters just imitate their respective behavior. The book shows why such classes exist and tests the implications of their behavior.

The book also looks at the policy implications of such behavior accepting as desirable, but not fully achievable, the democratic ideal in which sufficiently informed citizens are given equal weight in political choices. For Nelson, naïve altruists, the first class, ignore the anti-growth consequences of redistribution from the rich as a class to the poor as a class. That ignorance produces too much of that redistribution in terms of the democratic ideal.

To purchase and to know more about the book, interested parties may visit https://www.amazon.com/Good-Intentions-Bad-Consequences-Information-Problems/dp/152467379X.

“Good Intentions — Bad Consequences: Voters’ Information Problems”
By Phillip Nelson
Hardcover | 6 x 9in | 172 pages | ISBN 9781524673802
Softcover | 6 x 9in | 172 pages | ISBN 9781524673796
E-Book | 172 pages | ISBN 9781524673789
Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author
Phillip Nelson has specialized in two fields. The first is information economics in which he has produced seminal work in consumer economics. The second is public choice in which he has written many articles and the book, “Signaling Goodness.” This book melds these two fields producing new insights about voter information problems. He has spent a lifetime teaching graduate courses in these specialties and microeconomics theory at Binghamton University, Columbia University and the University of Chicago.

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