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Essays on old and new media, their interactions, and their effect on voters and representatives
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Schiavone, Antonio (2021) Essays on old and new media, their interactions, and their effect on voters and representatives. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3766438
Abstract
This thesis consists of three chapters investigating some of the interactions between the media and both voters and politicians.
In chapter 1, I analyse how the introduction of an open data initiative can affect budget allocations of local administrators in the context of Italian municipalities. I find that mayors react to the disclosure of their own data on expenditure and public good provision by improving the published indicators. We find that they sustain the cost of such improvement by worsening other indicators which are not public. These results contribute to the literature by providing the first causal estimates of the effect on mayors’ budget choices of their own data being disclosed.
In chapter 2 I exploit mayors’ online activity on the same open-data platform, OpenCivitas, to reveal a network between mayors which is relevant for tax and yardstick competition. I find that mayors in this network are different from the average on several dimensions and that they do not engage in tax competition with neighbouring municipalities as all the other mayors do. Mayors in the network compete with each other, despite the physical distance, by interdependently setting their property tax rates. We also show that this network existed before the website opened, but that the behaviour of mayors in the network changed after data disclosure. This chapter contributes to the literature by showing a previously unknown framework in tax competition.
Chapter 3 investigates, in the context of US counties, how a decrease in the number of local newspapers, or the complete disappearance of them, affects splitticket voting, a commonly used proxy for voters’ knowledge of candidates in local elections (Governors, Senators, Representatives). Surprisingly, I find that more exits of local newspapers are associated with higher share of split tickets in the county. Additionally, I find no evidence that losing the last newspaper affects party-line voting. These results are new in the literature and partially in contrast with previous evidence.
| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HJ Public Finance H Social Sciences > HM Sociology J Political Science > JA Political science (General) J Political Science > JC Political theory J Political Science > JS Local government Municipal government P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics |
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| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Mass media -- Political aspects, Freedom of information -- Political aspects, Expenditures, Public. Financial disclosure, Disclosure of information -- Political aspects, Online social networks -- Political aspects, Voting, Newspapers -- Political aspects | ||||
| Official Date: | December 2021 | ||||
| Dates: |
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| Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
| Theses Department: | Department of Economics | ||||
| Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
| Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
| Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Moav, Omer ; Redoano, Michela ; Sgroi, Daniel | ||||
| Format of File: | |||||
| Extent: | xii, 151 leaves : illustrations, maps | ||||
| Language: | eng |
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