Abstract
In an election over two policies, public mood swings whereby voters move ideologically towards a particular policy should never hurt its electoral performance. We find that this fundamental monotonicity property of preference aggregation cannot be guaranteed in the presence of a commercial media. When such a media outlet supplies news about policy-relevant uncertainty, mood swings affect demand for information. This in turn alters news quality, changing interim preferences and votes that can crowd out the ideological gain of the favored policy.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 110961 |
Journal | Economics Letters |
Volume | 222 |
Early online date | 12 Dec 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 31 Jan 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Saptarshi P. Ghosh gratefully acknowledges the financial support from the Science and Engineering Research Board Government of India under grant number DST MTR/2019/001483 .
Keywords
- Aggregate uncertainty
- Commercial media
- Electoral monotonicity
- Mood swings
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Finance
- Economics and Econometrics