Replication Data for: Three Essays on Political Economy of Media

This dissertation addresses the questions of what kind of political information is provided by media outlets and how media environments affect electoral politics. In my first essay, I investigate the effect of the entry of television on U.S. presidential elections from 1944 to 1964. I first show that television increases the importance of the national economy. Second, I show that television weakens the relationship between the circulation of partisan newspapers and the party vote share. In addition, I show that the crowding out of political information by television does not drive these results. I find that television is not associated with a drop in newspaper circulation and people are just as likely to read about campaigns in newspapers when television becomes available. These findings suggest that television can be a valuable source of political information. In the second essay, coauthored with Angela Fonseca Galvis and James Snyder, we study the effect of competition on media bias in the context of U.S. newspapers in the period 1870-1910. Our results indicate that partisan newspapers cover scandals involving the opposition party's politicians more intensely and cover scandals involving their own party's politicians more lightly. More importantly, we find evidence that competition decreases the degree of media bias. The point estimates suggest that compared to a newspaper in a monopoly position, a newspaper facing two competitors will on average exhibits less than 50% as much overall bias in coverage intensity. In the third essay, I study whether newspaper coverage of scandals can help voters punish the party of politicians involved in a scandal. I focus on the US House of Representatives from 1982 to 2004. I use the congruence between newspaper markets and congressional districts as a measure of newspaper coverage of scandals. I show that newspapers write more stories about representatives involved in a scandal in districts that are more congruent. I find that the parties in scandals suffer moderately in elections. More importantly, my results suggest that the parties in scandal do worse in districts/counties with higher congruence: they get fewer votes and are less likely to win.