How far can the media protect or undermine democratic institutions in unconsolidated democracies, and how persuasive can they be in ensuring public support for dictator's policies? We study this question in the context of Germany between 1929 and 1939. Using geographical and temporal variation in radio availability, we show that radio had a significant negative effect on the Nazi electoral support between 1929 and 1932, when political news were slanted against Nazi party. This effect was reversed in just 5 weeks following Hitler's appointment as chancellor and the transfer of control of the radio to the Nazis. Pro-Nazi radio propaganda caused higher vote for the Nazis in March 1933 election. After full consolidation of power, radio propaganda helped the Nazis to enroll new party members and encouraged denunciations of Jews and other open expressions of anti-Semitism. The effect of Nazi propaganda was not uniform. Depending on listeners' priors about the message, propaganda could be very effective or could backfire. Nazi radio was most effective in places where anti-Semitism was historically high and had a negative effect on the support for anti-Semitic policies in places with historically low anti-Semitism.

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Radio and the Rise of The Nazis in Prewar Germany

Understanding how returns to higher education vary across degree programs is critical for effective higher education policy Yet there is little evidence as to whether all degrees improve labor market outcomes, and whether they do so for students from different types of backgrounds We combine administrative and archival data from Chile with score-based admissions rules at more than 1,100 degree programs to study how the long-run earnings effects of college admission depend on selectivity, field of study, and student characteristics Our data link admissions outcomes for 30 cohorts of college applicants to administrative records of labor market outcomes up to 30 years post-application We estimate regression discontinuity specifications for each degree, and describe how threshold-crossing effects vary by degree type In addition, we use variation in admissions outcomes driven by threshold-crossing to estimate a simple model that maps our discontinuity estimates into causal effects of admission by degree Observed choice and survey data indicate that the assumptions underlying this model are consistent with student behavior We find that returns are heterogeneous, with large, positive returns to highly selective degrees and degrees in health, science, and social science fields Returns to selectivity do not vary by student socioeconomic status Our findings suggest a role for policies that guide students toward higher-return degrees, such as targeted loans and better college preparation for students from low-income backgrounds

/pdf/are-some-degrees-worth-more-than-others-evidence-from-n8y21iakii.pdf

Are Some Degrees Worth More than Others? Evidence from college admission cutoffs in Chile

Several school districts use assignment systems that give students an incentive to misrepresent their preferences. We find evidence consistent with strategic behavior in Cambridge. Such strategizing can complicate preference analysis. This paper develops empirical methods for studying random utility models in a new and large class of school choice mechanisms. We show that preferences are non-parametrically identified under either sufficient variation in choice environments or a preference shifter. We then develop a tractable estimation procedure and apply it to Cambridge. Estimates suggest that while 82% of students are assigned to their stated first choice, only 72% are assigned to their true first choice because students avoid ranking competitive schools. Assuming that students behave optimally, the Immediate Acceptance mechanism is preferred by the average student to the Deferred Acceptance mechanism by an equivalent of 0.08 miles. The estimated difference is smaller if beliefs are biased, and reversed if students report truthfully.

/pdf/demand-analysis-using-strategic-reports-an-application-to-a-2p2kw8ehds.pdf

Demand Analysis Using Strategic Reports: An Application to a School Choice Mechanism

We use a novel experimental design to identify the strategies used by subjects in an infinitely repeated prisoners’ dilemma experiment. We ask subjects to design strategies that will play in their place. We find that the strategy elicitation has negligible effects on behavior supporting the validity of this method. We study the strategies chosen by the subjects and find that they include some commonly mentioned strategies, such as tit-for-tat and Grim trigger. However, other strategies which are thought to have some desirable properties, such as win-stay-lose-shift are not prevalent. The results indicate that what strategy is used to support cooperation changes with the parameters of the game. Finally, our results confirm that long run miss-coordination can arise.

/pdf/strategy-choice-in-the-infinitely-repeated-prisoners-dilemma-25vf4awj1b.pdf

Strategy choice in the infinitely repeated prisoners' dilemma

We present direct field evidence of preference misrepresentation under deferred acceptance. The high-stakes admission process to graduate studies in psychology in Israel was centralized using the applicant-proposing version of deferred acceptance. Yet, a large fraction of these highly educated individuals, who had been informed about the strategy-proof nature of the mechanism in numerous ways, failed to play truthfully. Out of 704 rank-ordered lists that included a non-funded position in a program that offered funded positions, we found that in 137 (over 19%) the non-funded position was ranked higher (or the funded position was not ranked at all). This is despite the fact that the applicants had been informed that rank-ordered lists are never made public, funding is considered a positive signal of ability, and funding comes with no strings attached. Preference misrepresentation is associated with weaker applicants. We provide evidence from a laboratory experiment of a strong, causal, negative relationship between applicants’ expected desirability and preference misrepresentation.

'Strategic' Behavior in a Strategy-Proof Environment

We characterize a parametric family of application-rejection school choice mechanisms, including the Boston and Deferred Acceptance mechanisms as special cases, and spanning the parallel mechanisms for Chinese college admissions, the largest centralized matching in the world. Moving from one extreme member to the other results in systematic changes in manipulability, stability and welfare properties. Neither the ex-post dominance of the DA over the Boston equilibria, nor the ex-ante dominance of the Boston equilibria over the DA in stylized settings extends to the parallel mechanisms. In the laboratory, participants are most likely to reveal their preferences truthfully under the DA mechanism, followed by the Chinese parallel and then the Boston mechanisms. Furthermore, while the DA is significantly more stable than the Chinese parallel mechanism, which is more stable than Boston, efficiency comparisons vary across environments.

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Yan Chen

Papers

From Boston to Chinese parallel to deferred acceptance: theory and experiments on a family of school choice mechanisms