Character Endorsements and Electoral Competition

Archishman Chakraborty and Parikshit Ghosh

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2016, vol. 8, issue 2, 277-310

Abstract: When an elite-controlled media strategically endorses candidates in order to promote its own ideological agenda, office-seeking parties may completely pander to the media, under moderate ideological conflict between voters and the elite. Larger ideological conflict leads to polarization—parties either become media darlings or run populist campaigns. The welfare effects are: (i) delegation by the media owner to a more moderate editor is Pareto improving, (ii) the median voter is never better off delegating voting rights to the informed elite, (iii ) a majority of voters may be better off if the informed media did not exist. (JEL D72, D83, L82)

JEL-codes: D72 D83 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
Note: DOI: 10.1257/mic.20140241
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mic.20140241 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/aej/mic/ds/0802/2014-0241_ds.zip (application/zip)

Related works:
Working Paper: CHARACTER ENDORSEMENTS AND ELECTORAL COMPETITION (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aejmic:v:8:y:2016:i:2:p:277-310

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics is currently edited by Johannes Hörner

More articles in American Economic Journal: Microeconomics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().