Media Capture and Wealth Concentration

Giacomo Corneo

No 4086, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: While objective news coverage is vital to democracy, media bias can seriously distort collective decisions. This Paper develops a voting model where citizens are uncertain about the welfare effects induced by alternative policy options and derive information about those effects from the mass media. The media might, however, secretly collude with interest groups in order to influence the public opinion. In case of voting over the level of a productivity-enhancing public bad, it is shown that an increase in the concentration of financial wealth makes the occurrence of media bias more likely. Media bias is not necessarily welfare-worsening, but conditions for media bias to increase welfare are restrictive.

Keywords: Mass media; Public bads; Voting; Wealth inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-10
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP4086 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

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:cpr:ceprdp:4086

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP4086

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().