Elizabeth Schroeder

Fox News and political knowledge

The effects of partisan media on political knowledge are theoretically ambiguous. Knowledge effects are important because of their close connection to welfare effects, but the existing empirical literature on knowledge is limited. We study the knowledge effects of the Fox News Channel. Following DellaVigna and Kaplan (2007), we exploit naturally random variation in Foxs availability to identify causal effects. We use knowledge survey data from 2000, 2004 and 2008; our final sample has nearly one million question-level observations. We first confirm and expand on previous findings of Fox effects on voting. We then present an array of results from our knowledge analysis. While average effects (across issues), over the full time-frame are near-zero and most precise, we find evidence of positive effects both for issues that were more favorable to Republicans and for issues that Fox covered more often, and negative effects for issues Fox neglected. We also present evidence of Fox being associated with a decline in newspaper readership.

Teacher Pay and Student Performance: Evidence from the Gambian Hardship Allowance

ABSTRACT More than two dozen developing countries have implemented policies to increase teacher compensation in rural schools. We evaluate the impact of the Gambian hardship allowance, which provides a salary premium of 30–40% to primary school teachers in remote locations, on student performance. A geographic discontinuity in the policy’s implementation provides identifying variation. We find no effects of the hardship allowance on average test scores. However, we find suggestive evidence that student performance improved at the top of the test score distribution and fell at the bottom. Our findings indicate that the substantial, unconditional salary increases earned by Gambian teachers had little to no effect on average student performance, with gains limited to the best students.

Strategic Advertising Policy in International Oligopoly Markets

Abstract Strategic trade policy has become an important tool used by countries to increase domestic welfare. Ma and Ulph (2012) further this discussion by analyzing strategic advertising policy in international oligopoly markets. They find that it is always optimal for a home government to subsidize advertising for exports, whether firms compete in a Cournot- or Bertrand-type game. By extending their analysis to include the Cournot-Bertrand model, we find that an advertising subsidy is not always optimal for the home country. In some cases, the optimal strategic policy is an advertising tax.

Behavioral industrial organization: a synthesis of behavioral economics and industrial organization

The Handbook of Behavioral Industrial Organization integrates behavioral economics into industrial organization. Chapters cover concepts such as relative thinking, salience, shrouded attributes, cognitive dissonance, motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, overconfidence, status quo bias, social cooperation and identity. Additional chapters consider industry issues, such as sports and gambling industries, neuroeconomic studies of brands and advertising, and behavioral antitrust law. The Handbook features a wide array of methods (literature surveys, experimental and econometric research, and theoretical modelling), facilitating accessibility to a wide audience.

Handbook of Behavioral Industrial Organization

The Handbook of Behavioral Industrial Organization integrates behavioral economics into industrial organization. Chapters cover concepts such as relative thinking, salience, shrouded attributes, cognitive dissonance, motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, overconfidence, status quo bias, social cooperation and identity. Additional chapters consider industry issues, such as sports and gambling industries, neuroeconomic studies of brands and advertising, and behavioral antitrust law. The Handbook features a wide array of methods (literature surveys, experimental and econometric research, and theoretical modelling), facilitating accessibility to a wide audience.