Political Economy.

• Position: Program and Working Group Meetings - Meeting for discussion

The NBER'S Political Economy Program met in Cambridge on April 18. NBER Research Associate Alberto Alesina of Harvard University organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

James M. Snyder, Jr., MIT, and David Stromberg, Stockholm University, "Press Coverage and Political Accountability"

Discussant: John Friedman, University of California, Berkeley

Casey B. Mulligan, University of Chicago and NBER, and Kevin K. Tsui, Clemson University, "Political Entry, Public Policies, and the Economy" (NBER Working Paper No. 13830)

Discussant: Gerard Padro i Miquel, London School of Economics and NBER

Raghuram G. Rajan, University of Chicago and NBER, and Rodney Ramcharan, International Monetary Fund, "Landed Interests and Financial Underdevelopment in the United States"

Discussant: Jeremy C. Stein, Harvard University and NBER

David Clingingsmith, Case Western Reserve University; Asim Ijaz Khwaja, Harvard University; and Michael Kremer, Harvard University and NBER, "Estimating the Impact of the Hajj: Religion and Tolerance in Islam's Global Gathering" (See "National Security" Working Group meeting earlier in this section for a description of this paper.)

Discussant: Daniele Paserman, Boston University and NBER

Ernesto Dal Bo, Stanford University and NBER, and Marko Tervio, University of California, Berkeley, "Self-Esteem, Moral Capital, and Wrongdoing"

Discussant: Roland Benabou, Princeton University and NBER

Snyder and Stromberg estimate the impact of press coverage on citizen knowledge, politicians' actions, and policy. They find that a poor fit between newspaper markets and political districts reduces press coverage of politics. They use variation in this fit attributable to redistricting to identify the effects of reduced coverage. Exploring the links in the causal chain of media effects--voter information, politicians' actions, and policy--they find statistically significant and substantively important effects. Voters living in areas with less coverage of their U.S. House representative are less likely to recall their representative's name, and less able to describe and rate them. Congressmen who are less covered by the local press work less for their constituencies: they are less likely to stand witness before congressional hearings, to serve on constituency-oriented committees (perhaps), and to vote against the party line. Finally, this congressional behavior affects policy. Federal spending is lower in areas where there is less press...