Media bias and electoral competition

This paper examines the incentives of ideological media outlets to acquire costly information in a context of asymmetric information between political parties and voters. We consider two market structures: a monopoly media market and a duopoly one. We show that if each party has the support of a media, either party has the same probability of winning the election. However, if just one of the parties has the support of the media, the results might well change, as this party will get into office with a higher probability than the other party. We also analyze voters' welfare in this context and show that the important aspect is whether a media industry exists, and not the number of media outlets.Election, Accountability, Media, Bias

Media Competition and Information Disclosure

This paper analyzes an election game where self-interested politicians can exploit the lack of information that voters have about candidates' preferred policies in order to pursue their own agendas. In such a setup, we study the incentives of newspapers to acquire costly information, and how competition among the media affect such incentives. We show that the higher the number of potential readers and/or the lower the cost or investigating, the more the newspapers investigate. We also show that the readers' purchasing habits play a crucial role in the model. More specifically, we show that if the readers always buy a newspaper, media competition favors information disclosure; whereas if they just buy a newspaper in the case news are uncovered, competition is not so desirable.Media competition, Political accountability, Information

Information in elections: Do third inflexible candidates always promote truthful behavior?

We model an election between two Downsian mainstream candidates and a third inflexible politician. There is uncertainty about the state of the world. Candidates receive signals on the state and propose a policy to implement. There are two classes of voters: ideological, who are biased towards the policy proposed by the third candidate; and non-ideological, who want the policy implemented to correspond to the state of the world. We study two cases: (1) one in which the third candidate supports the most popular policy (in terms of the electorate's prior); (2) another one in which he supports the less popular policy. We obtain that the presence of a third candidate facilitates equilibria in which the two mainstream politicians make informative announcements, specially when the third candidate is biased towards the most popular policy. We also obtain that many of the informative equilibria are sustained by a coalition government, however the coalition is never between the two mainstream candidates. Last, we observe that in equilibrium, the third inflexible candidate has significant chances of winning office

Voting in small networks with cross-pressure

We present a model of participation in elections in small networks, in which citizens su¤er from cross-pressures if voting against the alternative preferred by some of their social contacts. We analyze how the existence of cross-pressures may shape voting decisions, and so, political outcomes; and how candidates may exploit this e¤ect to their interest.Network; Voting; Cross-Cutting.

Strategic communication: screening and signaling in a freelance journalist - editor game

We model strategic communication as a two-period game between an advisor and a decision maker, in which the advisor has private information on a policy-relevant state of the world but does not know the motives of the decision maker. If the advisor has the desire to please the decision maker and there is a positive probability that the decision maker values information, we identify different modes of communication that lead to information disclosure. We discuss our results in the context of a freelance journalist - editor game. Among the results is that if the journalist sufficiently values second period payoff, no information is transmitted in period one and the only equilibria implies information manipulation. Additionally, we show that the quality of the communication process does not depend on who manipulates the information although welfare does.Strategic Communication, Conformity, Screening, Signaling; Mass Media

Reputation and perverse transparency under two concerns.

Quite often an expert takes position on an issue where certain actions can be perceived as biased. If the expert has an informational concern and she does not want the listener to perceive her as biased, she has an incentive to avoid the biased action, even if she thinks this is the correct action. This paper shows that when an expert has multiple types and two concerns, an informational concern and a bias concern, the incentive to contradict private relevant information and avoid the biased action can even increase when the listener observes the quality of the expert’s advice. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for this perverse effect of transparency on consequences to emerge and discuss variations of the model

Voting in small networks with cross-pressure

We present a model of participation in elections in small networks, in which citizens suþer from cross-pressures if voting against the alternative preferred by some of their social contacts. We analyze how the existence of cross-pressures may shape voting decisions, and so, political outcomes; and how candidates may exploit this eþect to their interest

Reputation and news suppression in the media industry

This paper proposes a new argument to explain why media firms silence information and why this behavior may vary across firms and market structures. We build on the literature of career concerns and consider firms that seek to maximize their reputation for high quality. Crucial to our results is the idea that media firms' reporting strategies affect the probability that consumers learn the state of the world. We show that reputational concerns introduce an incentive for firms to withhold scoops and that this incentive is higher in firms with high levels of initial reputation and/or great social influence. We also show that the incentive to withhold information may persist when we consider competition. In particular, we show that sequential competition is not a powerful force towards accuracy; however, simultaneous competition can be. These results suggest that market competition matters for how much information is revealed by firms

The bureaucracy trap

We study the incentives of political parties to institute reforms that improve bureaucratic quality and increase the ability of governments to implement policy change. We consider a context of dynamic elections where current rigidities do not permit large changes in policies. We show that reforms in which a sufficient share of benefits are experienced late in time will never be implemented if parties are patient enough