Date:
Location:
Today's Speaker
Helios Herrera (University of Warwick), "Identity-Based Elections" (with Ravideep Sethi)
Abstract
We study electoral outcomes when citizens on either side of the political spectrum are exposed to different extents to mainstream news, as in the US case. Citizens gather information from mainstream news but also from possibly partisan media sources which filter news in particular predetermined ways. We assume citizens process all information they receive correctly, but choose their own media sources in a behavioral self-serving way to try to preserve their political faith/identity, namely attempting to rationally counteract mainstream news that they might view as unfavorable. This endogenous media choice generates an electoral advantage for the less exposed side, which can turn into a sure electoral victory even for the wrong candidate in a democracy. Results are robust to forms of media distrust and are stronger if citizens have biased priors. By contrast, in illiberal democracies where the government controls the media, we show how official media propaganda works only if citizens are unaware of it, but otherwise backfires entirely without censorship of other media.
Co-sponsored by FAS and IQSS, the Program on Political Economy (PE) supports research-related activities that integrate the study of economics and politics, whether by studying economic behavior in the political process or political behavior in the marketplace. In general, positive political economy is concerned with showing how observed differences among institutions affect political and economic outcomes in various social, economic, and political systems and how the institutions themselves change and develop in response to individual and collective beliefs, preferences, and strategies.
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All interested faculty and students are invited to attend.