In democracies voters rely on media outlets to learn about politically salient issues. This raises an important question: how strongly can media affect public perceptions? This paper uses a natural experiment - the staggered introduction of the Digital TV signal in Italy - to measure the effect...

In this survey, we investigate the general mechanisms underlying the political economy of attention and review their empirical relevance, in particular for electoral accountability. The focus is on exogenous or stimulus-driven attention that political actors try to win or divert when pursuing...

Das Ausmaß an Arbeitslosigkeit wird deutlich überschätzt. Das geht aus einer Analyse von 23 europäischen Staaten auf Basis des European Social Survey 2016 hervor. Im Vergleich zur Arbeitslosenquote gemäß der International Labour Organization überschätzten die Deutschen die...

Das Ausmaß an Arbeitslosigkeit wird deutlich überschätzt. Das geht aus einer Analyse von 23 europäischen Staaten auf Basis des European Social Survey 2016 hervor. Im Vergleich zur Arbeitslosenquote gemäß der International Labour Organization überschätzten die Deutschen die...

Welfare-state measures often tend to persist even when they seem to have become suboptimal due to changes in the economic environment. This paper proposes an information-based explanation for the persistence of the welfare state. I present a structural model where rationally inattentive voters...

Welfare-state measures often tend to persist even when they seem to have become suboptimal due to changes in the economic environment. This paper proposes an information-based explanation for the persistence of the welfare state. I present a structural model where rationally inattentive voters...

We use the 2007 acquisition of Dow Jones & Co. by News Corporation to study whether the perception of a news source's political affiliation affects its credibility and financial market impact. Following 2007, the price of Republican- (Democrat-) aligned stocks becomes less sensitive to positive...

In the wake of growing awareness, decision makers anticipate that they might become aware of material possibilities and ideas that, in their current state of ignorance, are unimaginable. This anticipation manifests itself in their choice behavior. This paper models this awareness of unawareness...

Our paper assesses the accuracy of individuals' tax perceptions. Based on personal interviews, we aim to find out how tax complexity affects the capability of respondents to calculate income tax liability. Tax complexity is measured by interacting multiple tax rates, applied to one or more tax...