Announcements
An article by Professor Brian Knight, former Ph.D. student Ruben Durante (now at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona), and two co-authors was awarded the 2017 Best Paper prize by the American Economics Journal -- Applied Economics.
In their article titled "Market-Based Lobbying: Evidence From Advertising Spending in Italy," authors Stefano DellaVigna, Ruben Durante, Brian Knight, and Eliana La Ferrara study how firms in Italy changed their advertising spending when media mogul Silvio Berlusconi was in power. They estimate that Berlusconi's private television network, Mediaset, saw a significant boost in advertising spending from firms between 1993-2009, especially from companies in more regulated sectors.