Careful what you say: The effect of manipulative information on the 2013 Czech presidential run-off election

• Authors: GUZI Martin; MIKULA Štěpán
• Year of publication: 2021
• Type: Article in Periodical
• Magazine / Source: ECONOMICS LETTERS
• MU Faculty or unit: Faculty of Economics and Administration
• Web: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176521004274?via%3Dihub
• Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2021.110152
• Keywords: Manipulative information; Voting; Sudetenland; 2013 Czech presidential election

Attached files

• 1-s2.0-S0165176521004274-main.pdf

• Description: We exploit a quasi-natural experiment that emerged during the Czech presidential run-off election to identify the impact of inaccurate and misleading information on electoral outcomes. A political campaign associated a vote for one of the candidates with a legally and politically unfounded risk relevant to people owning houses confiscated from ethnic Germans after the Second World War. Using municipality-level data in a difference-in-differences framework, our analysis suggests that the manipulative campaign affected the electoral outcomes and increased voter turnout in municipalities with a higher share of voters at risk of the unproven threat to housing ownership. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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