The course will provide an overview of recent research questions in Political Economy and Media Economics.
We will mostly focus on working papers (or recently published papers) to get a sense of the research frontier.
You will have to read some of these papers in details; we will review some others together during the courses,
and you will find additional references in the slides.
The reading list as well as the precise outline of the some of the classes might be updated during the semester.
Outline
Course 1 – What is Political Economy
- A short introduction to Political Economy.
- Elections in Democracy.
o Electoral systems and Electoral rules.
o Accountability and Representation.
Papers that we will review in class
- Persson, Torsten, Guido Tabellini and Francesco Trebbi (2003): “Electoral Rules and Corruption,”
Journal of the European Economic Association, 1(4): 958-989.
- Milesi-Ferretti, Gian Maria, Roberto Perotti and Massimo Rostagno (2002): “Electoral Systems and
Public Spending,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117(2): 609–657.
Course 2 – Money in Politics
- Elections and electoral campaigns.
- The (causal) impact of campaign resources and expenditures.
Papers that we will review in class
- Kendall, Chad, Tommaso Nannicini and Francesco Trebbi (2015): “How Do Voters Respond to
Information? Evidence from a Randomized Campaign,” American Economic Review, 105(1): 322-53.
- Le Pennec, Caroline and Vincent Pons (2023): “How Do Campaigns Shape Vote Choice? Multicountry
Evidence from 62 Elections and 56 TV Debates,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 138(2): 703-
767.
- Bekkouche, Yasmine, Julia Cagé and Edgard Dewitte (2022): “The Heterogeneous Price of a Vote:
Evidence from Multiparty Systems, 1993-2017,” Journal of Public Economics, 206.
- Cagé, Julia, Caroline Le Pennec and Elisa Mougin (2024): “Firm Donations and Political Rhetoric:
Evidence from a National Ban,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 16(3): 217-56.
Courses 3 & 4 – Investing in influence
- Lobbying
- Tax-exempt lobbing.
- Is charitable giving political?
- Investment acquisitions.
Papers that we will review in class
- Bombardini, Matilde and Francesco Trebbi (2011): “Votes or Money? Theory and Evidence from the
US Congress,'' Journal of Public Economics, 95: 587-611.
- Bertrand , Marianne, Matilde Bombardini and Francesco Trebbi (2014): “Is It Whom You Know or
What You Know? An Empirical Assessment of the Lobbying Process,” American Economic Review,
104(12): 3885-3920.
- Bertrand, Marianne, Matilde Bombardini, Raymond Fisman and Francesco Trebbi (2020): “Tax-Exempt
Lobbying: Corporate Philanthropy as a Tool for Political Influence,” American Economic Review,
110 (7): 2065-2102.
- Bertrand, Marianne, Matilde Bombardini, Raymond Fisman, Brad Hackinen and Francesco Trebbi (2021):
“Hall of Mirrors: Corporate Philanthropy and Strategic Advocacy,” The Quarterly Journal of
Economics, 136(4): 2413-2465.
- Cagé, Julia and Malka Guillot (2022): “Is Charitable Giving Political? Evidence from Wealth and
Income Tax Returns,” CEPR Discussion Paper 17597.
- Yildirim, Pinar, Andrei Simonov, Maria Petrova and Ricardo Perez-Truglia (2024): “Are Political and
Charitable Giving Substitutes? Evidence from the United States,” Management Science, 70(11): 7345-
8215.
Compulsory readings (articles for referee reports)
1. Fisman, Raymond, Jetson Leder-Luis, Catherine M. O'Donnell and Silvia Vannutelli (2025):
“Revolving Door Laws and Political Selection,” NBER Working Paper #33626.
2. Bertrand, Marianne, Matilde Bombardini, Raymond Fisman, Francesco Trebbi and Eyub Yegen
(2023): “Investing in Influence: Investors, Portfolio Firms, and Political Giving,” NBER Working
Paper #30876.
Course 4 & 5 – Political inequality and democratic discontent
- A long-run approach to turnout inequality: evidence from France.
- Income and political participation.
- Is the US in an era of high turnout? The small donors hypothesis.
Papers (and book!) that we will review in class
- Bouton, Laurent, Julia Cagé, Edgard Dewitte and Vincent Pons (2022): “Small Campaign Donors,”
NBER Working Paper #30050.
- Cagé, Julia (2024): “Political Inequality,” Annual Review of Economics, 16: 455-490.
- Cagé, Julia and Thomas Piketty (2025): A History of Political Conflict. Elections and social inequalities
in France, 1789-2022. Harvard University Press. Chapters 6 and 7.
- Broockman, David E., Elizabeth Rhodes, Alexander W. Bartik, Karina Dotson, Sarah Miller, Patrick K.
Krause and Eva Vivalt (2024): “The Causal Effects of Income on Political Attitudes and Behavior: A
Randomized Field Experiment,” NBER Working Paper #33214.
Compulsory readings (articles for referee reports)
1. Bernini, Andrea, Giovanni Facchini, Marco Tabellini and Cecilia Testa (2023): “Black Empowerment
and White Mobilization: The Effects of the Voting Rights Act,” NBER Working Paper #31425.
2. Autor, David, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson, and Kaveh Majlesi (2020): “Importing Political
Polarization? The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure.” American Economic
Review 110 (10): 3139-83.
Course 6 – Who do the poor and the rich vote for? Novel empirical evidence on partisan
realignment
- The dynamics of political conflict in contemporary democracies.
- The rising territorial divisions between the rural poor and the urban poor: Evidence from France.
Papers that we will review in class
- Ghetin, Amory, Clara Martínez-Toledano and Thomas Piketty (2022): “Brahmin Left versus
Merchant Right: Changing Political Cleavages in 21 Western Democracies, 1948-2020,” The
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 137(1): 1-48.
- Ghetin, Amory and Clara Martínez-Toledano (2025): “Political Cleavages in Contemporary
Democracies,” Handbook of Political Economy, ed. D. Acemoglu and J. Robinson, North Holland,
forthcoming.
- Cagé, Julia and Thomas Piketty (2025): A History of Political Conflict. Elections and Social
Inequalities in France, 1789-2022. Harvard University Press. Chapter 11.
- Kuziemko, Ilyana, Nicolas Longuet-Marx and Suresh Naidu (2023): “Compensate the Losers?,”
NBER Working Paper #31794.
Compulsory readings (articles for referee reports)
1. Brown , Jacob R., Enrico Cantoni, Ryan Enos, Vincent Pons and Emilie Sartre (2025): “Causes and
Extent of Increasing Partisan Segregation in the U.S. – Evidence from Migration Patterns of 212
Million Voters,” NBER Working Paper #33422.
2. Arteaga , Carolina and Victoria Barone (2025): “Republican Support and Economic Hardship: The
Enduring Effects of the Opioid Epidemic,” NBER Working Paper #33904.
Course 7 – Who do the poor and the rich vote for? Recovering individual voting patterns
from aggregate election data
- What is ecological fallacy?
- Understanding ecological inference methods, from Goodman regression to RxC count models.
- Causal inference and regression modelling.
- New Empirical Industrial Organization and electoral outcomes.
Papers (and books) that we will review in class
- King, Gary (1997): A Solution to the Ecological Inference Problem: Reconstructing Individual
Behavior from Aggregate Data. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
- King, Gary, Ori Rosen and Martin A. Tanner (ed.) (2004): Ecological Inference. New Methodological
Strategies. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
- Longuet-Marx, Nicolas (2025): “Party Lines or Voter Preferences? Explaining Political
Realignment,” Working Paper.
- Kuriwaki, Shiro and Cory McCartan (2025): “The Role of Confounders and Linearity in Ecological
Inference: A Reassessment,” Working Paper.
- Berry, Steven, James Levinsohn and Ariel Pakes (1995): “Automobile Prices in Market Equilibrium,”
Econometrica, 63(4): 841-890.
- Berry, Steven, James Levinshon and Ariel Pakes (2004): “Differentiated Products Demand Systems
from a Combination of Micro and Macro Data: The New Car Market,” Journal of Political Economy,
112(1): 68-105.
- Berry, Steven and Philip Haile (2024): “Nonparametric Identification of Differentiated Products
Demand Using Micro Data,” Econometrica, 92(4): 1135-1162.
Compulsory readings (articles for referee reports)
1. Bursztyn, Leonardo, Ingar Haaland, Nicolas Röver and Christopher Roth (2025): “The Social
Desirability Atlas,” CEPR Discussion Paper # 20325.
2. Bazzi, Samuel, Martin Fiszbein and Maximiliano Garcia (2024): “The Moral Values of “Rugged
Individualism”,” NBER Working Paper #32433.
Course 8 – Media bias
- The competing theories for media content : supply-side and demand-side.
- Journalist selection and compliance.
- How can we measure media slant?
- Visual bias in the media.
Papers that we will review in class
- Gentzkow, Matthew and Jesse Shapiro (2010): “What Drives Media Slant? Evidence from U.S. Daily
Newspapers,” Econometrica, 78(1).
- Gentzkow, Matthew, Jesse Shapiro and Matt Taddy (2019). “Measuring Group Differences in High-
Dimensional Choices: Method and Application to Congressional Speech,” Econometrica, 87(4):1307-
1340.
- Cagé, Julia, Moritz Hengel, Nicolas Hervé and Camille Urvoy (2024): “Political Bias in the Media.
Evidence from the Universe of French Broadcasts, 2002-2020,” CEPR Discussion Paper #18905.
- Caprini, Giulia (2025): “Visual Bias,” Working Paper.
- Chung, Wanyu, Duiyi Dai and Robert Elliott (2025): “Visual Bias in the Brexit Referendum: A
Quantitative Analysis of Newspaper Images,” CEPR Discussion Paper #20524.
Compulsory reading (article for referee report)
1. Boxell, Levi and Jacob Conway (2022): “Journalist Ideology and the Production of News:
Evidence from Movers,” Working Paper.
2. Ottonello, Pablo, Wenting Song, and Sebastian Sotelo (2024): “An Anatomy of Firms' Political
Speech,” NBER Working Paper #32923.
Course 9 – Media effects
- Media, political participation and voting: from Fox News to Sinclair.
- Media effects beyond political preferences and voting behaviour.
- Media as a tool for institutional change in development; the use of entertainment media for achieving
development.
Papers that we will review in class
- Broockman, David and Joshua L Kalla (2025): “Consuming Cross-Cutting Media Causes Learning
and Moderates Attitudes: A Field Experiment with Fox News Viewers,” The Journal of Politics, 87:
246-261.
- Ba, Bocar, Patrick Bayer, Jonathan Moreno-Medina and Aurélie Ouss (2025): “Officer-involved: the
Media Language of Police Killings ,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Forthcoming.
- Ouss, Aurélie and Arnaud Philippe (2017): “No Hatred or Malice, Fear or Affection: Media and
Sentencing,” Journal of Political Economy.
- McCrain, Josh, Gregory Martin, Nicola Mastrorocco and Arianna Ornaghi (2025): “Media
Consolidation,” Working Paper.
- … and more!
Compulsory reading (article for referee report)
1. Hatte, Sophie, Jordan Loper and Thomas Taylor (2025): “Connecting the Unconnected: Facebook
Access and Female Political Representation in Sub-Saharan Africa,” CEPR Discussion Paper
#20116.
Course 10 – Social Media
- Social media, news production and information consumption.
- The issue of polarization.
- Digital addiction.
Papers that we will review in class
- Cagé, Julia, Nicolas Hervé and Béatrice Mazoyer (2024): “Social Media Influence Mainstream Media:
Evidence from Two Billion Tweets,” Working Paper.
- Allcott, H., Braghieri, L., Eichmeyer, S., and Gentzkow, M. (2020). “The Welfare Effects of Social
Media,” American Economic Review, 110(3): 629–676.
- Braghieri, Luca, Sarah Eichmeyer, Ro'ee Levy, Markus Mobius, Jacob Steinhardt, and Ruiqi Zhong
(2024): “Article-Level Slant and Polarization of News Consumption on Social Media,” Working
Paper.
- Allcott, Hunt, Matthew Gentzkow and Lena Song (2022): “Digital Addiction,” American Economic
Review, 112(7)
- Allcott, Hunt et al (2025): “The Effect of Deactivating Facebook and Instagram on Users' Emotional
State,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. Forthcoming.
Compulsory readings (articles for referee reports)
1. Hatte, Sophie, Etienne Madinier and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya (2025): “Conflict Reporting in the
Digital Age,” Working Paper.
2. Bursztyn, Leonardo, Benjamin Handel, Rafael Jiménez-Duran and Christopher Roth (2024): “When
Product Markets Become Collective Traps: The Case of Social Media,” Working Paper.
Course 11 – Fake news and Fact-checking
- The (growing) spread of fake news.
- The efficiency of fact-checking in correcting false beliefs.
- The (dynamic) effects of fact-checking.
Papers that we will review in class
- Allcott, Hunt and Matthew Gentzkow (2017): “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election,”
Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2): 211-236.
- Cagé, Julia, Nathan Gallo, Moritz Hengel, Emeric Henry and Yuchen Huang (2025): “Fact-Checking and
Misinformation: Evidence from the Market Leader,” Working Paper.
- Assenza, Tiziana, Alberto Cardaci and Stefanie Huber (2024): “Fake news: Susceptibility, awareness
and solutions,” Technical report, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
- Barrera, Oscar, Sergei Guriev, Emeric Henry and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya (2020): “Facts, Alternative
Facts, and Fact Checking in Times of Post-Truth Politics,” Journal of Public Economics, 182:104-123.
- Henry, Emeric, Sergei Guriev, Théo Marquis and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya (2023): “Curtailing False News,
Amplifying Truth,” CEPR Discussion Paper.
Compulsory reading (article for referee report)
1. Campante, Filipe, Ruben Durante, Felix Hagemeister and Ananya Sen (2025): “GenAI
Misinformation, Trust, and News Consumption: Evidence from a Field Experiment,” Working
Paper.
Course 12 – Measuring media quality
- Information quantity… or quality?
- Enhancing media literacy.
- Inequality in access to information and Consumers' willingness to pay for different kinds of content.
Papers that we will review in class
- Briole, Simon, Julia Cagé and Andrea Prat (2025): “Access to Information, News Consumption and
Democratic Participation: A Nationwide Experiment in French High Schools,” Working Paper.
- Bang, Minji, Lucie L'Heude, Andrew Postlewaite and Holger Sieg (2023): “Access and Exposure to
Local News Media in the Digital Era: Evidence from U.S. Media Markets,” NBER Working Paper
#31436.
- Martin, Greg, Cameron Pfiffer and Shoshana Vasserman (2025): “What Do News Readers Want?”
Working Paper.
- Angelucci, Charles Andrea Prat (2024): “Is Journalistic Truth Dead? Measuring How Informed Voters
Are about Political News,” American Economic Review.
- Capozza, Francesco, Ingar Haaland, Christopher Roth, and Johannes Wohlfart (2022): “Recent Advances
in Studies of News Consumption,” Working Paper.
Compulsory readings (articles for referee reports)
1. Amar, Priyadarshi, Sumitra Badrinathan, Simon Chauchard, and Florian Sichart (2024: “Countering
Misinformation Early: Evidence from a Classroom-Based Field Experiment in India,” Technical
Report.
2. Chopra, Felix, Ingar K. Haaland, Fabian Roeben, Christopher Roth, and Vanessa Sticher (2025):
“News Customization with AI,” Working Paper.