Economic Perception and Cable News: Evidence from Panel Data, 2016–2020
by Audrey S. Wang
Abstract
This paper employs a panel approach to investigate the role of partisan cable news in shaping economic perceptions using the VOTER Survey dataset (2016–2020) and sentiment-scored transcripts from Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, examining how sentiment and coverage intensity interact with individuals’ viewership patterns to affect macroeconomic assessments. Findings suggest changes in exposure to cable news affects viewers’ economic perceptions, with effects varying by network, viewership patterns, time horizon and primetime exposure. Fox News exhibits particularly polarizing influence, with positive shifts in exposure improving economic outlooks among its viewers while worsening perceptions among non-viewers. Effects are moderated when individuals do not exclusively watch Fox News, suggesting a countervailing effect to watching multiple, ideologically diverse channels. Strikingly, non-primetime exposure to Fox’s coverage is more consistently associated with shifts in sentiment than primetime exposure, even among non-viewers — indicating that lower-profile programming may diffuse more broadly into the ambient media environment. In contrast, CNN’s economic coverage shows limited or short-lived influence, and MSNBC’s effects are more time-sensitive and contingent on viewership. These findings underscore the persistent influence of cable news in shaping public economic perceptions and suggest that media effects are not uniform across formats or audiences.
Professor Michelle Connolly, Faculty Advisor
Professor Bocar Ba, Faculty Advisor
JEL Codes: L8, L82
Keywords: Cable news; Consumer sentiment; Sentiment analysis
Reel Representation: The Economic Impact of Gender on Bollywood Box Office Revenue
by Sidharth Ravi
Abstract
The Hindi Film Industry, known as Bollywood, is seen as a gatekeeper of Indian culture.
Annually thousands of films are produced, half a million workers across India are
employed and millions in revenue is created. Although Bollywood has ensured increased
employment and wage opportunities for women on and off screen, the overall
representation of women remains severely low. Little is known about their impact on
Bollywood’s film revenue. This study uses a novel dataset to estimate the impact of
female representation on Bollywood revenue from 2009-2019. We apply a traditional
linear regression and use a ratio of female to male characters in a film’s cast as a proxy
for female representation. Results indicate there is not a significant relationship between
an increased female cast composition on box office performance. To check for the diverse
impact of star power, I analyzed the gender makeup of the movie star in a film, finding
this to have a significant impact on box office revenue. In addition, there is a significant
effect of production budgets and genre on box office performance.
Professor Genna Miller, Faculty Advisor
Professor Grace Kim, Seminar Advisor
JEL Codes: L820, F63, J16, Z11
Keywords: Film Economics, Bollywood, Gender, Female Representation
RadioWaves and Ballot Boxes: How Conservative Broadcasting Influenced Southern Electoral Behavior
by Ian Carlson Bailey
Abstract
This study examines how conservative talk radio influenced electoral behavior in the American South during the postwar era. Focusing on Carl McIntire’s “Twentieth Century Reformation Hour” program, I exploit exogenous variation in radio signal strength driven by topographical differences to identify causal effects on voting patterns. Using a novel dataset combining archival records with technical broadcasting data, I find that exposure to McIntire’s broadcasts significantly reduced support for Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election by 1.4 percentage points while increasing Republican candidate Richard Nixon’s vote share by 0.9 percentage points, with negligible effects on voter turnout. These effects were strongest in counties with the lowest proportions of Protestant residents, suggesting a ceiling effect in areas already predisposed toward conservatism. Furthermore, exposure to McIntire’s program increased the probability Democratic congressmen would vote against Kennedy’s 1962 Trade Expansion Act, demonstrating that partisan media influence extended beyond electoral outcomes to shape legislative behavior.
Professor Grace Kim, Faculty Advisor
JEL Codes: D72; L82; N42
Keywords: Media Effects; Political Economy; Electoral Behavior; Conservative Radio; Partisan
Realignment
The Press and Peace, Examining Iraq War Coverage in Newspapers using BERT LLMs
by Jakobe Bussey
Abstract
This study utilizes state-of-the-art BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) models to perform sentiment analysis on Wall Street Journal and New York Times articles about the Iraq War published between 2002 and 2012 and further categorize them using advanced unsupervised machine learning techniques. By utilizing statistical analysis and quartic regression models, this paper concludes that the two newspapers report on the Iraq War differently, with both exhibiting a predominantly negative-neutral tone overall. Additionally, the analysis reveals significant fluctuations in negativity from both outlets over time as the war progresses. Furthermore, this study examines the objectivity of reporting between editorial and non-editorial articles, finding that non-editorials tend to report more objectively, and the neutrality of editorials remains relatively constant while the objectivity of non-editorials fluctuates in response to war events. Finally, the paper investigates variations in sentiment across different topics, uncovering substantial variations in positive, neutral, and negative sentiments across topics and their evolution over time.
Professor Peter Arcidiacono, Faculty Advisor
JEL Codes: L8, L82, H56
Bias in Fact Checking?: An Analysis of Partisan Trends Using PolitiFact Data
by Thomas A. Colicchio
Abstract
Fact checking is one of many tools that journalists use to combat the spread of fake news in American politics. Like much of the mainstream media, fact checkers have been criticized as having a left-wing bias. The efficacy of fact checking as a tool for promoting honesty in public discourse is dependent upon the American public’s belief that fact checkers are in fact objective arbiters. In this way, discovering whether this partisan bias is real or simply perceived is essential to directing how fact checkers, and perhaps the mainstream media at large, can work to regain the trust of many on the right. This paper uses data from PolitiFact, one of the most prominent fact checking websites, to analyze whether or not this bias exists. Prior research has shown that there is a selection bias toward fact checking Republicans more often and that they on average receive worse ratings. However, few have examined whether this differential treatment can be attributed to partisan bias. While it is not readily apparent how partisan bias can be objectively measured, this paper develops and tests some novel strategies that seek to answer this question. I find that among PolitiFact’s most prolific fact checkers there is a heterogeneity in their relative ratings of Democrats and Republicans that may suggest the presence of partisanship.
Professor Peter Arcidiacono, Faculty Advisor
Professor Michelle Connolly, Faculty Advisor
JEL Codes: D83, D84, L82
Does Media Coverage of Sexual Assault Cases Cause Victims to Go to the Police? Evidence from FBI Data and Google Trends
By Harry Elworthy
This paper investigates the effect that national news coverage of prominent sexual assaults has on the reporting decisions of sexual assault victims. Estimates are based on time series data of reports made to police stations in the US from 2008 to 2016 and Google Trends data of search volume, along with an identification strategy that uses a number of individual high profile sexual assault allegations and related events as instruments. By removing assaults that occurred on the day that they were reported, I estimate the effect of coverage only on the reporting of assaults, and not on assaults themselves. A significant positive effect of news coverage on sexual assault reporting is found using several specifications. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that there were between 31 and 121 additional reports of sexual assault for each of the 38 high profile events captured. No evidence is found to suggest that these additional reports of sexual assault have different arrest rates to other reports, indicating that there are not a significant number of false reports. This paper adds to current literature on the sexual assault reporting decision by considering the effect of news coverage and by using different methods of inference to previous papers.
Advisor: Professor Patrick Bayer | JEL Codes: D91, J16, K42, L86, Z13
The Impact of Collegiate Athletic Success and Scandals on Admissions Applications
By William J. Battle-McDonald
This paper examines how the quantity and quality of admissions applications to Division 1 colleges and universities were affected by two non-academic factors: (1) performance of a school’s men’s basketball and football teams; and (2) scandals associated with these athletic programs. Admissions data from 2001 – 2017 were compared to team performance during their football and basketball seasons in order to understand how these non-academic factors contribute to an individual’s decisions to apply for admission. A multivariate linear regression model with school and year fixed effects supported the hypothesis that athletic success positively affects the quantity of applications, increasing them by up to 3% in basketball and 11% in football in the following application period. Seasonal football success was also shown to have negative impacts on the distribution of standardized testing scores of future applicant classes, however these scores were shown to increase when a team played their best season in five or more years. Additional analysis of the effects of athletic program scandals reveals a significant negative effect on the number of applications received, although a deep dive into a few of the most prominent scandals suggests that the benefits associated with violating NCAA rules may, under the right circumstances, be well worth the risk.
Advisor: Professor James Roberts | JEL Codes: I23, J24, L82, L83, Z2
Structural Estimation of FCC Bidder Valuation
By Renhao Tan, Zachary Lim, and Jackie Xiao
We modify a method introduced in Fox and Bajari (2013) which structurally estimates the deterministic component of bidder valuations in FCC spectrum auctions based on a pairwise stability condition: two bidders cannot exchange two licenses in a way that increases the sum of their valuations, and we apply it to C block auctions 5, 22, 35 and 58. Our modifications improve the fit of the Fox and Bajari (2013)’s estimator especially in similar auctions involving big bidders. We find that there is evidence of significant “cross-auction” complementaries between licenses sold in a particular auction and those already owned by these endowed bidders.
Advisor: Michelle Connolly | JEL Codes: D44, D45, H82, L82
Increased Foreign Revenue Shares in the United States Film Industry: 2000 – 2014
By Victoria Lim
The American film industry, which has historically been driven by the domestic market, now receives an increasing proportion of its revenue from abroad (foreign share). To determine the factors influencing this trend, this paper analyzed data from 11 countries of 2,337 American films released during 2000 – 2014. Both film and country attributes were analyzed to determine each attribute’s effect on foreign share, whether its effect size has changed over time and whether each attribute has changed in frequency amongst films released. The results identified six attributes, star actors, sequels, releases in top markets, release time lag, GDP growth and a match in language, that contributed to the increase in foreign share over this period.
Advisor: James Roberts, Kent Kimbrough | JEL Codes: F40, L82, Z11 | Tagged: Foreign Share, International Box Office Revenue, Motion Picture Industry
Predicting Transfer Values in the English Premier League
By Dylan Newman
This paper examines factors that affect the transfer value of players transferred into the English Premier League from 2009–2015. The analysis begins by examining what factors are significant in determining a player’s projected transfer fee based on the website Transfermarkt.com as well as the actual fee that the player was sold for. The paper goes on to find that competition level and a player’s form are not statistically significant in models built to determine a player’s transfer value. Quantile regression is then used to illustrate that there is a superstar effect with a forward’s goal’s scored in the transfer market.
Advisor: Kent Kimbrough, Peter Arcidiacono | JEL Codes: L83, Z21 | Tagged: English Premier League, Quantile Regression, Soccer Transfer Fee
