Game Theory and the Election: To disclose or not disclose your tax return?
Although not officially required, every presidential candidate for the last 9 elections has released their tax returns. Every candidate, except Donald Trump. The reason that most candidates choose to release their tax forms, even when it proves damaging to their image overall, was explained by the New York Times via economics. According to the article, unless you have the worst imaginable tax return, it is in your best interest to disclose. Therefore, the fact that Trump hasn’t disclosed his returns must mean they are very, very bad.
I have decided to create a game theory chart to test the New York Time’s model and see if it holds true to the current situation.
Disclose or not? Given: Trump’s Returns Worse than Clinton’s
| Hillary Clinton | |||
| Disclose | Don’t Disclose | ||
| Donald Trump | Disclose | -2, 0 | 0, -1 |
| Don’t Disclose | -1, 1 | 0,0 | |
Both Don’t Disclose: There is no damaging information released about either of them, so each of them has no loss. This is the socially optimal situation.
Both Disclose: Clinton loses nothing because any damage done by her returns is mitigated by the fact that Trumps are even more worse. Trump loses 2 because his returns are very damaging.
Clinton Discloses, Trump doesn’t: Clinton looks trustworthy for disclosing so she gains 1. Trump looks untrusty worthy so he loses one.
Trump Discloses, Clinton Doesn’t: Clinton looks untrustworthy so she loses 1. Trump stays at zero because his boost from disclosing is off-set by the fact that his returns are very harmful.
Looking at this graph Clinton has the dominate strategy of disclosing, which she has done. Given Clinton’s dominate strategy it is in Trump’s best interest to not disclose. Assuming that the New York Times is right and Trump has tax records which would make him look worse in comparison to Clinton, this game theory chart accurately predicts the current situation.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/upshot/what-we-can-learn-from-donald-trumps-unreleased-tax-returns.html