American Economic Journal:
Microeconomics
ISSN 1945-7669 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7685 (Online)
State Censorship
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics
vol. 7,
no. 2, May 2015
(pp. 280–307)
Abstract
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. (JEL D72, D74, D83)Citation
Shadmehr, Mehdi, and Dan Bernhardt. 2015. "State Censorship." American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 7 (2): 280–307. DOI: 10.1257/mic.20130221Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
- D74 Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
- D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
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