State Censorship

Mehdi Shadmehr and Dan Bernhardt

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2015, vol. 7, issue 2, 280-307

Abstract: We characterize a ruler's decision of whether to censor media reports that convey information to citizens who decide whether to revolt. We find: (i) a ruler gains (his ex ante expected payoff increases) by committing to censoring slightly less than he does in equilibrium: his equilibrium calculations ignore that censoring less causes citizens to update more positively following no news; (ii) a ruler gains from higher censorship costs if and only if censorship costs exceed a critical threshold; (iii) a bad ruler prefers a very strong media to a very weak one, but a good ruler prefers the opposite. (JEL D72, D74, D83)

JEL-codes: D72 D74 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
Note: DOI: 10.1257/mic.20130221
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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