The effects of partisan media on political knowledge are theoretically ambiguous. Knowledge effects are important because of their close connection to welfare effects, but the existing empirical literature on knowledge is limited. We study the knowledge effects of the Fox News Channel. Following...

I present a model of affective polarization ("that both Republicans and Democrats increasingly dislike, even loathe, their opponents," Iyengar et al, 2012) via Bayesian inference. Two agents, representing the parties, repeatedly make policy choices. Each choice is based on a balance of concerns...

We analyze a game theoretic model of social learning about a consumption good with endogenous timing and heterogeneous accuracy of private information. We show that if individuals value their reputation for the degree to which they are informed, this reduces the incentive to learn by observing...

We use data from the Associated Press U.S. college football poll to analyze the ex-post optimality of social learning in a non-lab setting. The poll is a weekly subjective ranking of the top 25 teams, voted on by over 60 sports journalists. The aggregate ranks are publicly observable each week...

The recent nonexperimental literature on social learning focuses on showing that observational learning exists, that is, individuals do indeed draw inferences by observing the actions of others. We take this literature a step further by analyzing whether individuals are Bayesian social learners....

We review the theoretical literature on market determinants of media bias. We present a theoretical framework that organizes many key themes in the literature, and discuss substantive lessons.

I develop a model of the relation between the media environment and political obstructionism. I show that when voters are less informed by media, obstructionism becomes a more effective political signal for the minority party. The model thus implies that media change can cause gridlock via...

I develop a model of the market for news in which consumers and reporters both ideologically misinterpret information and have biased beliefs about the extent to which others misinterpret information. I show that for some parameter values, in equilibrium: (i) a monopolist media outlet hires a...

We analyze a game theoretic model of social learning about a consumption good with endogenous timing and heterogeneous accuracy of private information. We show that if individuals value their reputation for the degree to which they are informed, this reduces the incentive to learn by observing...