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It's the Media, Stupid - How Media Activity Shapes Public Spending

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Author Info
Bruns, Christian
Himmler, Oliver

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Abstract

Politicians seeking reelection need voters to know what they have done for them. Thus, incentives may arise to spend more money where media coverage is higher. We present a simple model to explain the allocation of public spending across jurisdictions contingent on media activity. An incumbent seeking to maximize the probability of reelection will shift more money to jurisdictions where an extra dollar gains more votes because a larger share of the electorate is informed about his policy. This prediction is tested using US data on county-level public spending, Designated Market Areas (DMAs) and location of licensed television stations. Instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of media activity to public spending, 2SLS results confirm a positive effect of media coverage on county-level public spending. Spatial regression rules out the possibility of confounding media effects with spatial autocorrelation.

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File URL: http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/10332/
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number 10282.

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Date of creation: Jul 2007
Date of revision: Aug 2008
Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:10282

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Related research
Keywords: public spending information television elections

Find related papers by JEL classification:
D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
H7 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations
D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty

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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.:
  1. Timothy Besley & Robin Burgess, 2002. "The Political Economy Of Government Responsiveness: Theory And Evidence From India," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 117(4), pages 1415-1451, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Matthew Gentzkow, 2006. "Television and Voter Turnout," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 121(3), pages 931-972, 08. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Alesina, Alberto & Baqir, Reza & Easterly, William, 1999. "Public goods and ethnic divisions," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2108, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
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  4. Levitt, Steven D & Snyder, James M, Jr, 1997. "The Impact of Federal Spending on House Election Outcomes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(1), pages 30-53, February.
    Other versions:
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