This paper tests the rational ignorance hypothesis by Downs (1957). This theory predicts that people do not acquire costly information to educate their votes. We provide new estimates for the e¤ect of voting participation by exploring the Brazilian dual voting system -voluntary and compulsory -whose exposure is determined by citizens' date of birth. Using a fuzzy RD approach and data from a self-collected survey, we …nd no impact of voting on individuals' political knowledge or information consumption. Our results corroborate Downs's predictions and refute the conjecture by Lijphart (1997) that compulsory voting stimulates civic education. * We are grateful to Alan Auerbach and two anonymous referees for many constructive suggestions.We also thank
This paper estimates the effects of the compulsory voting legislation on individuals' political orientations though a regression discontinuity framework. The identification comes from Brazil's dual voting system-voluntary and compulsory-whose exposure is determined based on citizen's date of birth. Using self-collected data, we find that compulsory voting legislation has sizable effects on individuals' political preferences, making them more likely to identify with a political party and to become extreme oriented.
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