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Do ADS Influence Editors? Advertising and Bias in the Financial Media

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Author Info
Jonathan Reuter
Eric Zitzewitz

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Abstract

The independence of editorial content from advertisers' influence is a cornerstone of journalistic ethics. We test whether this independence is observed in practice. We find that mutual fund recommendations are correlated with past advertising in three personal finance publications but not in two national newspapers. Our tests control for numerous fund characteristics, total advertising expenditures, and past mentions. While positive mentions significantly increase fund inflows, they do not successfully predict returns. Future returns are similar for the funds we predict would have been mentioned in the absence of bias, suggesting that the cost of advertising bias to readers is small. Copyright (c) President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology..

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File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/qjec.2006.121.1.197
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Publisher Info
Article provided by MIT Press in its journal The Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Volume (Year): 121 (2006)
Issue (Month): 1 (02)
Pages: 197-227
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Handle: RePEc:tpr:qjecon:v:121:y:2006:i:1:p:197-227

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Ulrike Malmendier & Geoffrey Tate, 2008. "Superstar CEOs," NBER Working Papers 14140, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Cronqvist, Henrik, 2006. "Advertising and Portfolio Choice," Working Paper Series 2006-16, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics. [Downloadable!]
  3. Sendhil Mullainathan & Joshua Schwartzstein & Andrei Shleifer, 2006. "Coarse Thinking and Persuasion," NBER Working Papers 12720, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  4. Sumit Agarwal & Brent W. Ambrose, 2008. "Does it pay to read your junk mail? evidence of the effect of advertising on home equity credit choices," Working Paper Series WP-08-09, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. [Downloadable!]
  5. S. Ravid & John Wald & Suman Basuroy, 2006. "Distributors and film critics: does it take two to Tango?," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 201-218, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Matthew Ellman & Fabrizio Germano, 2004. "What Do the Papers Sell?," Economics Working Papers 800, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Feb 2006. [Downloadable!]
  7. Sendhil Mullainathan & Andrei Shleifer, 2005. "Persuasion in Finance," NBER Working Papers 11838, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Fabrizio Germano, 2008. "On Commercial Media Bias," Economics Working Papers 1133, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Apr 2009. [Downloadable!]
  9. Rafael Di Tella & Ignacio Franceschelli, 2009. "Government Advertising and Media Coverage of Corruption Scandals," NBER Working Papers 15402, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. M. Hyman, 2009. "Responsible Ads: A Workable Ideal," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 87(2), pages 199-210, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Maria Petrova, 2009. "Newspapers and Parties: How Advertising Revenues Created an Independent Press," Working Papers w0131, Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR). [Downloadable!]
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