Political Media Contests and Confirmatory Bias

Adam Jacobsson ()

No 2002:3, Research Papers in Economics from Stockholm University, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper models a two-period media contest between two political

candidates campaigning to win an election. Two main cases

are examined. In the first case voters behave as unbiased Bayesian

updaters when assessing political information. The second case considers

voters suffering from confirmatory bias. In the first case I find

that candidates spend equal amounts of their campaign funds in both

periods in equilibrium. In the second case, candidates spend more

in period one. A candidate with better media access (in period one)

does, however, better if voters suffer from confirmatory bias than if

they do not.

Keywords: Election campaigns; voting behavior; confirmatory bias. Election campaigns; voting behavior; confirmatory bias. Election campaigns; voting behavior; confirmatory bias. Election campaigns; voting behavior; confirmatory bias (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D81 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2002-01-29
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www2.ne.su.se/paper/wp02_03.pdf (application/pdf)

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:hhs:sunrpe:2002_0003

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Papers in Economics from Stockholm University, Department of Economics Department of Economics, Stockholm, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anne Jensen ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).