Interest groups seek to influence economic activity through public and private politics. Public politics takes place in the arenas of public inst it utions, whereas private politics takes place out side public inst itutions oft en in the arena of public sentiment. Private politics refers to action by interest groups directed at private parties, as in the case of an activist group launching a campaign against a firm

Numerous empirical studies have demonstrated that asset prices react rapidly, if at all, to news published in the mass media. In many cases, the information has been discounted and prices have already moved upon primary publication through news wires, press releases or firm announcements. Any remaining information is usually quickly priced in after

The independence of editorial content from advertisers' influence is a cornerstone of journalistic ethics We test whether this independence is observed in practice. We find that mutual fund recommendations are correlated with past advertising in three personal finance publications but not in two national news- papers. Our tests control for numerous fund characteristics, total advertising expenditures

The first part of this paper explores whether aggregate media coverage was different for internet IPOs as opposed to a matching sample of non-internet IPOs in the late 1990s. So we read all news items that came out between 1996 through 2000 on 458 internet IPOs and a matching

The provision of mass media content over next-generation 3G mobile networks is envi- sioned as an exciting new application of new media. This paper focuses on the mobile Internet as strategic challenge for media and entertainment companies. It provides an overview of distinctive features of the mobile Internet related to personalization, time and location sensitivity, uncertainties b echnology push and market pull, and motiva- tions for engagemer

In the deliberations of scholars, policy analysts, and policy makers, power and influence. Yet the historical record shows that television has not changed the economics of attention not merely a fluke or just ironic. It points to a major impediment to the development of information societies. State-owned-and-controlled media can be an important policy lever for overcoming this opposition

Privatization and Self-Regulation as Tropes of Global Media Restructuring There is a power to language itself in affecting media reform around the world. The field of media regulation is filled with examples of strong ideas, encapsulated in words and phrases, that have an enormous impact on legislative transformation, and the export of which seems a characteristic of globalization. Just think of the ideology-laden tropes

(Harvard University and NBER) October 1, 2002 Abstract There are two dierent types of media bias. One bias, which we refer to as ideology, re ects a news outlet's desire to aect reader opinions in a particular direction. The second bias, which we refer to as spin

During the twentieth century, virtually all western democracies saw growing media concentration as a threat to freedom of the press and to democracy. Most adopted laws to support press diversity, whether through competition (antitrust and media specific) laws or subsidy arrangements, often subsidies targeted specifically to support weaker competing

We examine the patterns of media ownership in 97 countries around the world. We find that almost universally the largest media firms are owned by the government or by private families. Government ownership is more pervasive in broadcasting than in the printed media. Government ownership of the media is generally associated with less press freedom, fewer political and economic