Talk:The Myth of the Rational Voter

Latest comment: 7 years ago by ExpertIdeasBot in topic Dr. Dutta's comment on this article

Untitled edit

We need a section on criticism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.92.148.250 (talk) 22:47, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

No, we need a section on reception. The article, as it stands, leans in no direction and the contributors have done a good job of simply stating the facts. Blurpeace 04:49, 17 August 2011 (UTC)Reply

Dr. Dutta's comment on this article edit

Dr. Dutta has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

This article reads like an advertisement for a particular book by Bryan Caplan rather than attempt to communicate to the reader about the notion of the rational voter and the extent to which

she is mythical. The claim that economic rationality assumes away biases such as racism is simply incorrect! These biases are incorporated in defining preferences that are maximised subject to a budget constraint. And so one can define "degrees of racism" such that an extreme racist would never hire a worker of the "wrong" race.

More importantly the author keeps talking about what data was used but tells us virtually nothing about what his conclusions were. Any revision should attempt to tell the reader about his findings!


We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Dutta has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


  • Reference : Toke S. Aidt & Jayasri Dutta, 2010. "Fiscal federalism and electoral accountability," Working Papers 2010/11, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 16:02, 19 May 2016 (UTC)Reply