Applied Economics Lunch Seminar

Du 12/02/2019 de 12:30 à 13:30

Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

CASSAN Guilhem (University of Namur)

Voting Power and the Supply of News Media: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from India

In this paper, we investigate how media owners react to changes in the political importance of vote choices - voting power - in different areas. Whereas "one person, one vote" is often considered the guiding principle of democracies, there is in fact great variation across the democratic world in the extent to which votes matter at all, the extent to which they translate directly into seats or affect elections in a more indirect manner (such as through electoral colleges), and the weight given to one vote compared to another (e.g., votes in densely populated areas counting for less). As the voting power of an area increases, influencing the political behavior of the electorate also becomes increasingly important for actors seeking political influence. As a result, controlling the quantity and bias of the news media that voters are exposed to becomes a serious challenge. One may therefore expect changes in the voting power of an area to be associated with an increase in the supply of news media. To tackle this question, we analyze how the Indian newspaper market reacted to changes in the voting power of diff erent areas, by investigating changes in the number of newspapers, the circulation of these newspapers (both on average and aggregated), as well as the identify and nature of the owners.