Related papers: Influential News and Policy-making
I study how strategic communication among voters shapes both political outcomes and parties' advertising strategies in a model of informative campaign advertising. Two main results are derived. First, echo chambers arise endogenously.…
I develop a rather simple agent-based model to capture a co-evolution of opinion formation, political decision making and economic outcomes. I use this model to study how societies form opinions if their members have opposing interests.…
Decision makers who receive many signals are subject to imperfect recall. This is especially important when learning from feeds that aggregate messages from many senders on social media platforms. In this paper, we study a stylized model of…
In the digital economy, technological innovations make it cheaper to produce high-quality content. For example, generative AI tools reduce costs for creators who develop content to be distributed online, but can also reduce production costs…
Institutions and investors face the constant challenge of making accurate decisions and predictions regarding how best they should distribute their endowments. The problem of achieving an optimal outcome at minimal cost has been extensively…
Which level of voting costs is optimal in a democracy? This paper argues that intermediate voting costs - what we term a "Midcost democracy" - should be avoided, as they fail to ensure that electoral outcomes reflect the preferences of the…
Adverse economic shocks are known to reshape voter behavior -- the demand side of politics. Much less is known about their consequences for the supply side: how such shocks affect who becomes a politician. This paper examines how job losses…
Political campaigns are among the most sophisticated marketing exercises in the United States. As part of their marketing communication strategy, an increasing number of politicians adopt social media to inform their constituencies. This…
How does targeted advertising influence electoral outcomes? This paper presents a one-dimensional spatial model of voting in which a privately informed challenger persuades voters to support him over the status quo. I show that targeted…
Disinformation research has proliferated in reaction to widespread false, problematic beliefs purported to explain major social phenomena. Yet while the effects of disinformation are well-known, there is less consensus about its causes; the…
A major problem that resulted from the massive use of social media networks is the diffusion of incorrect information. However, very few studies have investigated the impact of incorrect information on individual and collective decisions.…
We study how motivated reasoning affects the provision of climate policy in an electoral competition framework. Voters experience anticipatory disutility when future outcomes appear grim and may therefore distort beliefs in response to…
With fact-checking by professionals being difficult to scale on social media, algorithmic techniques have been considered. However, it is uncertain how the public may react to labels by automated fact-checkers. In this study, we investigate…
Bias assessment of news sources is paramount for professionals, organizations, and researchers who rely on truthful evidence for information gathering and reporting. While certain bias indicators are discernible from content analysis,…
We consider the impact of incomplete information on incentives for node cooperation in parallel relay networks with one source node, one destination node, and multiple relay nodes. All nodes are selfish and strategic, interested in…
From the social sciences to machine learning, it has been well documented that metrics to be optimized are not always aligned with social welfare. In healthcare, Dranove et al. (2003) showed that publishing surgery mortality metrics…
When consequential decisions are informed by algorithmic input, individuals may feel compelled to alter their behavior in order to gain a system's approval. Models of agent responsiveness, termed "strategic manipulation," analyze the…
An abundance of literature has shown that the injection of noise into complex socio-economic systems can improve their resilience. This study aims to understand whether the same applies in the context of information diffusion in social…
Misinformation -- false or misleading information -- is considered a significant societal concern due to its associated "misinformation effects," such as political polarization, erosion of trust in institutions, problematic behavior, and…
Polarization, declining trust, and wavering support for democratic norms are pressing threats to U.S. democracy. Exposure to verified and quality news may lower individual susceptibility to these threats and make citizens more resilient to…