Those of you who told us along the way that you liked the paper, your encouragement went a long way, thank you!

This paper remains one of my favorite papers. We fought to keep the model in the paper, and I believe it serves a unique purpose helping to measure heterogenous persuasive and dissuasive effects.

Hope you read and enjoy it, as we enjoyed working on it.

Moreover, even though news outlets prefer partisan content (and may be biased in how they report news) they do not look biased when it comes to the coverage of an Rep vs a Dem candidate (which is, to my knowledge, a novel finding in the literature).

These offsetting forces
moderate Democratic rhetoric, making Dems look relatively less extreme than the Republicans.

The estimates show that when Democrats take an extreme position, it is ~4X
more effective at mobilizing their base to turnout, compared to when Republicans take an extreme position.

At the same time, it provokes 2X the level of backlash from swing voters for Dems compared to Reps.

We measure the positions (set by the politician and reported by the news media) using texts from thousands of newspaper
stories and focus on the U.S. Senate races from 1980-2012.

We rely on our model and use instruments that exploit sports-driven crowding-out of political coverage in news media.

So how do the Republicans and the Democrats set their positions and experience gains/losses at each margin?

Depends on these elasticities at the turnout and swing voter margin.

If the politicians could choose, they would choose to take a partisan position with their core and a centrist position with the swing voters in private.

But as media collects and distributes information across the electorate, targeted and varied positioning becomes hard to achieve.

But it can turn also off centrist voters, resulting in a loss at the swing voter margin benefiting the opponent [“Dissuasive Effects”].

Choosing a centrist position instead can garner the support of the swing voters (stealing those votes away from the opponent).

Choosing an extreme position (in line with the position of the partisan core) and making statements as such can earn a politician the support of the core, resulting in a gain at the turnout margin [“Persuasive Effects”].

The idea in this paper required some explaining in the day, but not anymore: News media disciplines the speech of politicians.

Politicians choose positions/statements to get media attention towards (or away from) themselves and simultaneously try to get support from a heterogenous constituency.

I need you to slow down another 30 seconds so we can run :)

It will take a while to make Philly’s incoming WNBA team profitable.

And, not surprisingly, what will take it to sustainability will be good marketing and financial planning rather than great athletic capacity in the long term. (Of course, we want that too!)

Good luck to Philly’s new WNBA team!

Despite the growth projections, most WNBA teams currently generate annual losses.

Tennis and golf remain the two most profitable women’s sports, mostly thanks to the media deals, corporate sponsorships, and ticket sales.

As one dives into the operational reality of bringing a team to a city, it becomes clear that involvement of an NBA team is beneficial because a venue is required, and this is a big investment for any new team.

So 5 WNBA teams are owned by NBA owners, and others have various collaborations.

— avg team valuation
$3.5b vs 55m

— avg viewership per game
1.6m vs 456K (across various media)

— avg ticket cost
$94 vs 47

Some interesting numbers from this undertaking were as follows (pls take them with a grain of salt, as most numbers came from personal interviews):

NBA vs WNBA:

— Avg salary of a player: $9.6m vs $120K/yr

— highest paid player:
$54m vs $235K

But the moment you walk into women’s sports, you realize how challenging it is for these teams to make it. They need to be financially sustainable and compete with men’s sports for media/advertising dollars, sponsorships, fandom, and venues.

Otherwise investments become donations for a cause.