This paper analyses the effect of information disseminated by the Internet on voting behavior. We address endogeneity in Internet availability by exploiting regional and technological peculiarities of the preexisting voice telephony network that hinder the roll-out of fixed-line broadband...

We employ several different approaches to estimate the political position of Australian media outlets, relative to federal parliamentarians. First, we use parliamentary mentions to code over 100 public intellectuals on a left-right scale. We then estimate slant by using the number of mentions...

This paper systematically analyzes media attention devoted to terrorist attacks worldwide between 1998 and 2012. Several aspects are related to predicting media attention. First, suicide missions receive significantly more coverage, which could explain their increased popularity among terrorist...

We document that trust in public institutions "and particularly trust in banks, business and government" has declined over recent years. U.S. time series evidence suggests that this partly reflects the pro-cyclical nature of trust in institutions. Cross-country comparisons reveal a clear legacy...

We examine how terrorism alters the demand for education through perceived risks and returns by relating terrorist attacks to media signal coverage and schooling in Kenya. Exploiting geographical and temporal variation in wireless signal coverage and attacks, we establish that media access...

This paper examines the role of local TV market structure in US congressional politics, exploiting variation in the overlaps of political markets and TV markets. Local TV stations are hypothesized to report relatively more per US House representative in less populous markets (where the number of...

Do media slant news in favor of the banks they borrow from? We study how lending connections affect news coverage of banks earnings reports and of the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis on major newspapers from several European countries. We find that newspapers cover announcements by their lenders...

What motivates kidnapping decisions by rebel groups? This paper studies news coverage of a proposed prisoner exchange program (the Acuerdo Humanitario; AH) in connection with FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) kidnappings in the early 2000s. We propose that AH News nourished the...

We study the role of media reporting of alleged adverse effects of influenza vaccination on adults' (aged 50 or more) decisions to vaccinate against the flu. We exploit the diffusion of news linking suspected deaths to the vaccine, during the 2014 vaccination campaign in Italy. Using daily...