Paying Positive to Go Negative: Advertisers' Competition and Media Reports

Andrea Blasco, Paolo Pin and Francesco Sobbrio

Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna

Abstract: This paper analyzes a two-sided market for news where advertisers may pay a media outlet to conceal negative information about the quality of their own product (paying positive to avoid negative) and/or to disclose negative information about the quality of their competitors' products (paying positive to go negative). We show that whether advertisers have negative consequences on the accuracy of news reports or not ultimately depends on the extent of correlation among advertisers' products. Specifically, the lower the correlation among the qualities of the advertisers' products, the (weakly) higher the accuracy of the media outlet' reports. Moreover, when advertisers' products are correlated, a higher degree of competition in the market of the advertisers' products may decrease the accuracy of the media outlet's reports.

JEL-codes: D82 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-com, nep-cta and nep-mkt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://amsacta.unibo.it/4467/1/WP772.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Paying positive to go negative: Advertisers׳ competition and media reports (2016)
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:bol:bodewp:wp772

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna ().