NSFC“计量建模与经济政策研究”基础科学中心定期召开研究进展与学术交流报告会，目标是在NSFC基础科学中心各领域科研人员之间搭建一个交流合作平台。报告者将介绍本人近期取得的重要科研进展或某一前沿领域国际重要进展，或介绍近期科研活动中遇到的困难等。通过交流讨论，了解前沿领域研究进展，探索交叉学科领域合作可能，激发新思想，寻找新思路。

NSFC“计量建模与经济政策研究”基础科学中心学术交流报告会第三讲

报告题目：Ownership, Partisanship, and Media Slant: Evidence from the U.S. Media during the Sino-U.S. Trade Conflict

主讲人：吴朦，美国波士顿大学经济学院经济学博士，现任厦门大学经济学院、王亚南经济研究院助理教授，研究方向为：发展经济学、应用微观经济学、政治经济学

时 间：2022年11月24日，12:30-14:00

地 点：厦门大学经济楼A101

摘 要：

I explore what determines media slant towards foreign nations using the 2018-2019 Sino-U.S. trade negotiation as a testing ground. Using an event study design and coverage by local U.S. newspapers, I analyze how stories about China respond to shifts of U.S. policy towards China, and how this media reaction is determined by owners’ partisan affinity, controlling for readers’ characteristics. I find that local newspapers with Republican-leaning owners increase the intensity of negative coverage following a shift towards hostile trade policies relative to papers of nonpartisan owners, and they decrease this slant following a conciliatory shift; the opposite is true for Democratic leaning media owners. To address the potential endogeneity of diplomatic events, I select events that induced significant abnormal price fluctuations of trade-war-related financial securities. I further establish a causal effect of owners’ preferences by exploiting mergers and acquisitions among national conglomerates as a source of variation in political orientation of owners. These findings imply a spillover from domestic policy in the formation of citizens’ sentiment towards other nations: the media, as their lens to view the world, is colored by domestic political polarization.