Dear all,

we invite you to the next CEU public seminar, held in-person, by Masha Titova (Vanderbilt).

Title: “Targeted Advertising in Elections”

Time: 2022 November 16, Wednesday, 11.15am-12.30

Venue: 51 Quellenstrasse, 1100, Vienna; room: B-505

Abstract: Some elections are unwinnable for challengers because pivotal voters prefer policies on the opposite sides of the status quo. In this paper, I argue that the challenger can win any such election if he uses targeted advertising with verifiable messages. In his private ads, the challenger makes each voter believe that his policy is a sufficient improvement over the status quo and wins the election when his policy is sufficiently moderate. Targeted advertising makes the voters regret their choices and minimizes the voter welfare relative to the complete information and public advertising benchmarks. As a voter’s favorite policy becomes more extreme, her dissatisfaction with the status quo grows, and she becomes persuadable by a wider range of policies. As a result, the challenger’s odds of winning increase.

Speaker’s website: https://maria-titova.com/.

For any inquiries, please contact the economics seminar organizer at CEU, Timea L. Molnar, at molnartl@ceu.edu.