IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aub/autbar/579.03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Instrumental Voter Goes to the News-Agent: Demand for Information, Election Closeness, and the Media

Author

Listed:
  • Valentino Larcinese

Abstract

This paper studies the impact of instrumental voting on information demand and mass media behaviour during electoral campaigns. If voters act instrumentally then information demand should increase with the closeness of an election. Mass media are modeled as profit-maximizing firms that take into account information demand, the value of customers to advertisers and the marginal cost of customers. Information supply should be larger in electoral constituencies where the contest is expected to be closer, there is a higher population density, and customers are on average more profitable for advertisers. The impact of electorate size is theoretically undetermined. These conclusions are then tested with comfortable results on data from the 1997 general election in Britain.

Suggested Citation

  • Valentino Larcinese, 2003. "The Instrumental Voter Goes to the News-Agent: Demand for Information, Election Closeness, and the Media," UFAE and IAE Working Papers 579.03, Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC).
    • Handle: RePEc:aub:autbar:579.03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://pareto.uab.es/wp/2003/57903.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Timothy Besley & Robin Burgess, 2002. "The Political Economy of Government Responsiveness: Theory and Evidence from India," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1415-1451.
    2. Timothy Besley & Andrea Prat, 2006. "Handcuffs for the Grabbing Hand? Media Capture and Government Accountability," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 720-736, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ascensión Andina-Díaz, 2009. "Media competition and information disclosure," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 32(4), pages 705-705, May.
    2. Bruce Blonigen, 2008. "New Evidence on the Formation of Trade Policy Preferences," NBER Working Papers 14627, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Larcinese, Valentino & Puglisi, Riccardo & Snyder Jr., James M., 2011. "Partisan bias in economic news: Evidence on the agenda-setting behavior of U.S. newspapers," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(9-10), pages 1178-1189, October.
    4. Juan Restrepo & Rosalyn Rael & James Hyman, 2009. "Modeling the influence of polls on elections: a population dynamics approach," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 140(3), pages 395-420, September.
    5. Valentino Larcinese, 2007. "Does political knowledge increase turnout? Evidence from the 1997 British general election," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 131(3), pages 387-411, June.
    6. Huber, Sascha & Gschwend, Thomas & Meffert, Michael F. & Pappi, Franz Urban, 2008. "Erwartungsbildung über den Wahlausgang und ihr Einfluss auf die Wahlentscheidung," Papers 08-01, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alessandro Gavazza & Mattia Nardotto & Tommaso Valletti, 2019. "Internet and Politics: Evidence from U.K. Local Elections and Local Government Policies," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(5), pages 2092-2135.
    2. Djankov, Simeon & McLiesh, Caralee & Nenova, Tatiana & Shleifer, Andrei, 2003. "Who Owns the Media?," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 46(2), pages 341-381, October.
    3. Hulya Eraslan & Saltuk Ozerturk, 2018. "Information Gatekeeping and Media Bias," Koç University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum Working Papers 1808, Koc University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum.
    4. Armando J. Garcia Pires, 2017. "Media pluralism and competition," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 43(2), pages 255-283, April.
    5. Donati, Dante, 2023. "Mobile Internet access and political outcomes: Evidence from South Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    6. Ascensión Andina-Díaz, 2009. "Media competition and information disclosure," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 32(4), pages 705-705, May.
    7. Ding, Rong & Hou, Wenxuan & Liu, Yue (Lucy) & Zhang, John Ziyang, 2018. "Media censorship and stock price: Evidence from the foreign share discount in China," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 112-133.
    8. Svaleryd, Helena & Vlachos, Jonas, 2009. "Political rents in a non-corrupt democracy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(3-4), pages 355-372, April.
    9. Ascensión Andina Díaz, 2009. "Media bias and electoral competition," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 33(2), pages 211-231, May.
    10. Andrew Leigh, 2009. "Does the World Economy Swing National Elections?," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 71(2), pages 163-181, April.
    11. Larcinese, Valentino & Sircar, Indraneel, 2017. "Crime and punishment the British way: Accountability channels following the MPs’ expenses scandal," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 75-99.
    12. Christopher J. Coyne & Peter T. Leeson, 2008. "How Do Rulers Choose? Dual Domains of Discretion in Political Decision Making," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(3), pages 727-743, September.
    13. Gratton, Gabriele, 2015. "The sound of silence: Political accountability and libel law," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 266-279.
    14. Suphachalasai, Suphachol, 2005. "Bureaucratic Corruption And Mass Media," Environmental Economy and Policy Research Discussion Papers 31929, University of Cambridge, Department of Land Economy.
    15. Garz, Marcel & Sörensen, Jil, 2017. "Politicians under investigation: The news Media's effect on the likelihood of resignation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 82-91.
    16. Brian Knight & Ana Tribin, 2022. "Opposition Media, State Censorship, and Political Accountability: Evidence from Chavez’s Venezuela," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 36(2), pages 455-487.
    17. Garcia Pires, Armando J., 2014. "Media diversity, advertising, and adaptation of news to readers’ political preferences," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 28-38.
    18. Puglisi Riccardo, 2011. "Being The New York Times: the Political Behaviour of a Newspaper," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-34, April.
    19. De Rosa, Donato & Iootty, Mariana, 2012. "Are natural resources cursed ? an investigation of the dynamic effects of resource dependence on institutional quality," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6151, The World Bank.
    20. Timothy Besley & Thiemo Fetzer & Hannes Mueller, 2023. "How Big Is the Media Multiplier? Evidence from Dyadic News Data," CESifo Working Paper Series 10619, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mass media; instrumental voting; marginality; political news; British politics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aub:autbar:579.03. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Xavier Vila (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ufuabes.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.