In the standard neoclassical model consumers use all the available information and the demand for goods depends exclusively on preferences and prices whereas other spurious information do not play any role. In the market for books, we investigate if – in contrast to the standard model – the...

This paper introduces a unifying theoretical framework to understand the relationship between different types of communications technology (CT) and the incidence of civil conflict. In our model, one-way CT allows the government to broadcast messages they use to (mis)inform dissidents about the...

We examine how terrorism alters the demand for education through perceived risks and returns by relating terrorist attacks to media signal coverage and schooling in Kenya. Exploiting geographical and temporal variation in wireless signal coverage and attacks, we establish that media access...

How does the internet affect young people's mental health? We study this question in the context of Italy using administrative data on the universe of cases of mental disorders diagnosed in Italian hospitals between 2001 and 2013, which we combine with information on the availability of...

We study the impact of the first American party committed to redistribution from rich to poor on anti-Black media content in the 1890s. The Populist Party sought support among poor farmers, regardless of race, providing the segregationist Democratic establishment in the South with an incentive...

This paper presents a response to Jaeger, Joyce, and Kaestner's (JJK) recent critique (IZA Discussion Paper No. 10317) of our 2015 paper "Media Influences on Social Outcomes: The Impact of MTV's 16 and Pregnant on Teen Childbearing." In terms of replication, those authors are able to confirm...

We reassess recent and widely reported evidence that the MTV program 16 and Pregnant played a major role in reducing teen birth rates in the U.S. since it began broadcasting in 2009 (Kearney and Levine, American Economic Review 2015). We find Kearney and Levine's identification strategy to be...

In democracies voters rely on media outlets to learn about politically salient issues. This raises an important question: how strongly can media affect public perceptions? This paper uses a natural experiment – the staggered introduction of the Digital TV signal in Italy – to measure the...

Asymmetric information between voters and legislative representatives poses a major challenge to the functioning of representative democracy. We examine whether representatives are more likely to serve long-term campaign donors instead of constituents during times of low media attention to...

Can media coverage of shooters encourage future mass shootings? We explore the link between the day-to-day prime time television news coverage of shootings on ABC World News Tonight and subsequent mass shootings in the US from January 1, 2013 to June 23, 2016. To circumvent latent endogeneity...