Price discrimination in political advertising: Evidence from the 2012 presidential election

Sarah Moshary

RAND Journal of Economics, 2020, vol. 51, issue 3, 615-649

Abstract: In 2010, the US Supreme Court loosened contribution limits to Political Action Committees (PACs), sparking fears that big donors could exert outsize influence on elections by funding PAC advertising. However, PACs are potentially handicapped when buying advertising time; data from 2012 reveal that PACs pay 32% above regulated campaign rates. I estimate a model of demand for advertising by PACs, exploiting the misalignment of state and media market borders to address price endogeneity. I find that prices reflect willingness‐to‐pay for viewer demographics rather than media bias. The estimates further suggest that network‐owned stations discriminate more successfully than do local affiliates.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1756-2171.12335

Related works:
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:bla:randje:v:51:y:2020:i:3:p:615-649

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... al.asp?ref=0741-6261

Access Statistics for this article

RAND Journal of Economics is currently edited by James Hosek

More articles in RAND Journal of Economics from RAND Corporation Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().