State Censorship

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Shadmehr, Mehdi; Bernhardt, Dan
• 署名单位: University of Miami; University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; University of Warwick
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7669
• DOI: 10.1257/mic.20130221
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 280-307
• 关键词: spatial theory; media bias; disclosure; COORDINATION; INFORMATION; essays; news

摘要

We characterize a ruler's decision of whether to censor media reports that convey information to citizens who decide whether to revolt. We find: (i) a ruler gains (his ex ante expected payoff increases) by committing to censoring slightly less than he does in equilibrium: his equilibrium calculations ignore that censoring less causes citizens to update more positively following no news; (ii) a ruler gains from higher censorship costs if and only if censorship costs exceed a critical threshold; (iii) a bad ruler prefers a very strong media to a very weak one, but a good ruler prefers the opposite.