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Character Endorsements And Electoral Competition

Author

Listed:
  • Archishman Chakraborty

    (Syms School of Business, Yeshiva University)

  • Parikshit Ghosh

    (Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics)

Abstract

We present a model in which the media endorses the character of office-seeking candidates as a means to promote its own ideological agenda. In equilibrium, political parties completely pander to the elite-controlled media under moderate ideological conflict between voters and the elite. Larger ideological conflict leads to stochastic polarization-parties either adopt the role of media darlings or run highly populist campaigns. The analysis yields three critical welfare results:(a) delegation of message strategy by the media owner to a more moderate editor leads to a Pareto improvement (b) the median voter is never better o¤ delegating choice of candidates to the informed elite, i.e., democracy has instrumental value even when voters are uninformed (c) even with optimal editorial delegation, the media may be a net harm to a majority of voters, i.e., they may be better of if the informed elite did not exist.

Suggested Citation

  • Archishman Chakraborty & Parikshit Ghosh, 2013. "Character Endorsements And Electoral Competition," Working papers 234, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:cde:cdewps:234
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Archishman Chakraborty & Parikshit Ghosh & Jaideep Roy, 2020. "Expert-Captured Democracies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(6), pages 1713-1751, June.
    2. Miura, Shintaro, 2019. "Manipulated news model: Electoral competition and mass media," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 306-338.
    3. Archishman Chakraborty & Parikshit Ghosh, 2016. "Character Endorsements and Electoral Competition," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(2), pages 277-310, May.
    4. Federico Vaccari, 2023. "Influential news and policy-making," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 76(4), pages 1363-1418, November.
    5. Roberti, Paolo, 2019. "Citizens or lobbies: Who controls policy?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 497-514.
    6. Stephane Wolton, 2019. "Are Biased Media Bad for Democracy?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 63(3), pages 548-562, July.
    7. Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay & Kalyan Chatterjee & Jaideep Roy, 2015. "Manufacturing extremism: political consequences of profit-seeking media," Discussion Papers 15-14, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    8. Sendhil Mullainathan & Andrei Shleifer, 2005. "The Market for News," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1031-1053, September.
    9. Karakas, Leyla D. & Mitra, Devashish, 2020. "Inequality, redistribution and the rise of outsider candidates," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 1-16.
    10. Mullainathan, Sendhil & Shleifer, Andrei, 2005. "The Market for News," Scholarly Articles 33078973, Harvard University Department of Economics.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    character endorsements; electoral competition; media bias; polarization; cheap talk; delegation; immiserizing information.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

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