Tag Archives: Political bias

In the July issue of the American Economic Review, Ruben Durante, Paolo Pinotti, and Andrea Tesei argue that entertainment TV has shaped Italian politics and affected the cognitive skills of viewers. From the abstract: We study the political impact of commercial television in Italy exploiting the staggered introduction of Berlusconi’s private TV network, Mediaset, in the early 1980s. We find that individuals with early access to Mediaset all-entertainment content were more likely to vote...

The World Bank’s Doing Business project claims to provide objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 190 economies and selected cities at the subnational and regional level. In the Wall Street Journal, Josh Zumbrun and Ian Talley report that the ranking must be revised. Over time, World Bank staff put a heavy thumb on the scales of its report by repeatedly changing the methodology that was used to calculate the country rankings, Mr. Romer said. The focus of...