Labour Mobility of Minorities Versus Majorities–Theory and Application

Most American newspapers are published in cities in which no other daily newspaper is published. While these newspapers are considered city monopolists, this study examines the effect of readership competition across cities. By using a sample of 386 newspaper firms that publish in cities in which no other daily newspaper is published, this paper demonstrates that these ‘monopoly’ newspapers face significant readership competition from newspapers published in other cities.     

Newspapers’ market shares and the theory of the circulation spiral

We consider a model of daily newspapers’ competition to test the validity of the so-called “theory of the circulation spiral”. According to it, the interaction between the newspapers and the advertising markets drives the newspaper with the smaller readership into a vicious circle, finally leading it to death. In a model with two newspapers, we show that, contrary to this conjecture, the dynamics envisaged by the proposers of the theory, does not always lead to the elimination of one of them.     

当前做好报刊零售工作的几点思考

伴随着市场经济的发展,报纸之间的竞争已不再局限于报纸内容,而是将竞争上升到营销即报纸发行这样一个实现产品自身价值的层面。报纸作为一种信息传播工具,其传播对象是数以万计的读者,同时还要将广大的读者对其关注所产生的＂注意力经济＂即＂眼球经济＂销售给广告商。而面对科技高速发展的今天,报纸发行业所面临的不仅是来自各种报刊之间的竞争,还有来自于电视媒体、网络媒体等多种形式媒体之间的竞争。在中国报业正在面临深化文化体制改革的大背景下,必须在新的市场竞争中以完善发行管理做好报纸发行工作,从而更好地发挥报纸发行在报业经济中的作用。     

Newspaper Circulation and Local Government Efficiency*

In this paper, we examine the role of the newspaper market for a key aspect of political accountability: the efficient use of public funds by elected politicians. Newspapers are a major provider of the political information voters use to monitor their elected officials, especially at the local level. Thus, the incentives for politicians to reduce budgetary slack should be stronger in jurisdictions where the electorate is well informed by newspapers. Using panel data on the circulation of some 150 newspapers in Norwegian municipalities, we show that increases in local newspaper circulation are associated with higher levels of local government efficiency.     

报纸定价机制和定价策略的思考

报纸作为一种特殊的商品,在市场竞争环境下,既有符合一般商品的定价规律,也有其自身的特点。在市场竞争日益激烈的报业市场中,报纸涨价成为报业集团增加收入的一个有效途径,不同类型报纸有不同的价格特性,需要认真分析报纸涨价的可行性因素,依定价分析的实施步骤对其进行合理定价。     

Price effects of multimarket contact among movie chains in small US metropolitan areas

Movie theater chains are ubiquitous in major metropolitan areas of the US, with generally two or more of these large chains present. However in smaller metropolitan areas, we see far more variation in the role of these chains. This allows for an opportunity to see whether multimarket contact (MMC) among these firms has an impact on movie pricing in these smaller markets. In this paper, data on movie pricing, market structure, and income and population characteristics are obtained for 79 small metropolitan areas–those with under 250,000 people–which are not part of larger “consolidated” metropolitan areas. A crude measure of MMC is found to indeed be related to price increases in the smallest of these markets.     

What’s fit to print: The effect of ownership concentration on product variety in daily newspaper markets

This paper examines the effect of ownership concentration on product position, product variety and circulation in the US daily newspaper market. The effects of consolidation in differentiated product markets cannot be determined solely from theory. Because multi-product firms internalize business stealing, mergers may encourage firms to reposition products, leading to more, not less, variety. Using data on the assignment of reporters to topical areas at 706 newspapers in 1993, 1999 and 2004, results show that both differentiation and variety increase with ownership concentration. Moreover, greater concentration increases variety over a range of topics and does not reduce readership.     

Differentiated credence goods and price competition

This paper analyses price competition between two firms producing horizontally and vertically differentiated goods. These are assumed to be credence goods, as consumers can hardly ascertain the quality of the commodities. To illustrate the model, we adapt it to represent a newspaper industry with two outlets, when the population of readers have preferences both on the political stance of the newspapers and on the accuracy of the news they dispatch.     

What do ads buy? Daily coverage of listed companies on the Italian press

We match daily data on newspaper coverage of a sample of Italian listed companies with monthly data on the amount of advertising that a given company has purchased on a given newspaper. Controlling for time-invariant features of each newspaper and of each company – and for ownership links between companies and newspapers – we show that newspaper coverage of a company is positively and significantly related with advertising expenditure by that company on that newspaper. The magnitude of this correlation is quite large: when controlling for ownership links, a standard deviation increase in monthly ads expenditure (i.e. 75,000 euros) is on average associated with 8 additional articles per month mentioning that company. We also find that coverage of a company is higher the day after a press release, but especially in newspapers where more ads are purchased. This result on press releases is robust to controlling for time invariant features of each company–newspaper pair, i.e. for (company × newspaper) fixed effects.Moreover, coverage is correlated with past day absolute return and trading volume, and this relationship appears to be steeper for those newspapers where more ads are purchased, especially in the case of positive returns.     

报纸是否有效披露公司环境信息——来自我国采掘业公司的经验证据

以2008—2010年采掘业公司为研究对象,对其环境信息的报纸报道进行统计分析,发现报纸披露存在地方保护倾向、报道滞后等问题。另外,通过回归分析,发现当年有环境事故、公司规模、中央国有控股、已上市时间等对报纸披露公司环境信息有显著影响,也看到报纸存在被动披露＂、大公司＂倾向、弱化负面报道、央企保护等现象。研究表明,报纸并未有效披露公司环境信息,报纸的作用有待进一步强化与完善。     

Endorse or Not to Endorse: Understanding the Determinants of Newspapers’ Likelihood of Making Political Recommendations

This article investigates the determinants of newspapers’ provision for political opinion. I empirically examine the role of newspapers’ political preferences and market competition on newspapers’ decision to make endorsements. Regression results suggest that market competition turns newspapers more likely to make endorsements. Results from a simple model show that newspapers’ ideology determine their endorsements, making partisan papers more likely to make political recommendations and endorse challengers than non‐partisan newspapers.     

Dimensions of civic activism and their effectiveness in exposing corruption: evidence from Italy

This article studies the influence of civic activism in exposing corruption across Italian regions. Using different dimensions of civic activism (including local and national newspapers, the internet, blood donors, and voter turnout), we make the distinction between active (media, internet, voters) and passive (blood donors) activism. Results show interesting different impacts of civic activism on corruption. In particular, voter turnout, blood donors, and national newspaper diffusion consistently increased exposure of corruption, while the internet and local newspapers showed opposite effects. Thus, local newspapers and the internet point to the possibility of media capture (influence) with regard to corruption exposure. The main findings hold following the substantial reforms in the nineties (called Mani Pulite).     

Economy through a lens: Distortions of policy coverage in UK national newspapers

This paper shows that communication of economic news varies across newspapers in the United Kingdom. We develop new time series of economic news tonality using a unique dataset of policy influenced articles published in major UK newspapers. We show that the volume and tonality of news respond to current economic conditions. For example, the nature of news changes around events of economic uncertainty such as the global financial crisis and the post-EU referendum periods. We also provide illustrative evidence that communication differs across newspaper formats. Tabloids, as opposed to quality newspapers, tend to express news more negatively, and mostly report policy-related news during periods of economic stress. The integral importance of these results is illustrated by news reaction curves showing a strong positive relationship mostly lasting three months between consumer sentiments and news.     

The Newspaper Can Be an Effective Teaching Tool

The effective use of newspapers as a supplement to economic instruction is a challenge to most instructors. The author details a method of bringing real-world problems to the classroom by creating a newspaper for classroom use. Students are reported to be motivated and encouraged to think and to talk about economics.     

How historical analogies in newspapers of five countries make sense of major events: 9/11, Mumbai and Tahrir Square

We analyze how historical analogies are used in the media to make sense of novel events. While earlier work focused on single case studies, this is the first quantitative analysis comparing historical analogies invoked in three events in newspapers from five countries. With very high intercoder reliability we found 881 invocations of historical analogies. We found an interesting contrast between the roles of historical analogies in foreign policy decision making vs. newspaper articles. When the task is advocacy for policy choice, a compelling historical analogy will be one in which the causal mechanisms are as similar as possible to the current situation so that similar actions are likely to lead to similar results. Instead, newspapers spend more time at the early stages of sense-making and help the audience understand just a few features of the current situation. Newspapers thus offer a much broader range of historical analogies without much regard to maximizing similarity.     

媒体压力与空气质量改善

本文使用2014—2017年我国省级报纸对省份内地级市的空气污染报道数据,实证检验了媒体压力在促进空气质量改善中的作用。研究发现,媒体对污染报道的增加,显著促进了城市空气质量的改善,且这种改善的效果受污染报道发表报纸是否为省级党委机关报以及城市主政官员特征的影响。这意味着,媒体污染报道主要通过对政府官员形成的压力来促进地方政府进行污染治理、改善空气质量。进一步研究发现,环境治理投入的增加与工业污染排放的减少,是媒体压力促进城市空气质量改善的有效途径。本文的结论,对于理解新时代我国舆论监督的作用机制以及更好发挥新闻媒体监督在环境治理中的作用,提供了新的视角。     

Recruitment advertising: The marketing-human resource interface

The common perception of recruitment advertising is of the "want ads" in the local or national newspapers. Despite the lack of academic interest, in some cases, recruitment advertising has adopted the color, imagination, and creativity of consumer advertising. Some recruiters have recognized the marketing benefits of job ads and the need for a corporate communications policy covering all company communications. This paper examines the limited literature on recruitment advertising. The authors compile a list of characteristics of marketing-oriented recruitment advertisements and apply these to their exploratory analysis of the recruitment section of one popular Sunday newspaper in the United Kingdom.     

The Euro Area,a Stressful Monetary Union? Learning from Newspapers’ Monetary Policy Coverage

Through a textual analysis of national newspaper articles covering European central bankers’ statements and policy decisions from 1999 to 2011, I derive the concerns expressed by national media in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). I consider these concerns as a benchmark for national preferences, and thus for the preferences of national central bankers in the EMU. I also test the existence of groups of national media (i.e., national publics) according to their shared expressed concerns. The results show that in the euro zone, similar concerns are shared by different country groups, corresponding to a group of countries from Northern Europe (Belgium, Finland, and the Netherlands), Southern Europe (Spain and Portugal), and the Periphery (Italy, Greece, and Ireland), but that there are two isolated countries (France and Germany), whose newspapers do not share the issues raised by the rest of the European newspapers. This approach provides further insights into the potential heterogeneity of the European central bankers inside the Governing Council of the ECB in terms of policy preferences.     

Voting with your feet: Political competition and internal migration in the United States

Do people “vote with their feet” in response to a lack of political competition? Since political competition is associated with higher growth and welfare, with the free movement of labour, we argue that it should also encourage inward migration. We test this hypothesis by using data from the US and find a strong positive relation between political competition and net migration. This result is robust to alternative specifications, alternative samples and addressing endogeneity using the Voting Rights Act to instrument for political competition. The effect is economically large, specifically, we find that an increase in political competition in the order of magnitude observed in US Southern states during the post-war period leads to an increase in net migration by between 27 and 44 individuals per 1000 population.