Research
-
Abstract: This paper studies a sender who designs a public menu of narratives for a heterogeneous population whose cross-sectional distribution of priors is known only through moment restrictions. After observing a public event, each receiver selects the narrative that best fits his prior and updates within it. We show that under binary states, one threshold-setting narrative per realization suffices. Implementability is bounded by a persuasion frontier, along which there is a trade-off across signal realizations. In a political-narrative application, the dictator's optimal value can fall as the average prior rises: a higher average prior can let Nature meet the variance lower bound with less mass strictly above the persuasion threshold.
-
Digital Infrastructure, Urban-Rural Income Gaps, and Population Concentration: Evidence from the Broadband China Strategy
Abstract: This paper studies how China’s national broadband expansion affects urban-rural income gaps and population reallocation. Using panel data for about 200 cities from 2010 to 2022 and a difference-in-differences design, we find that digital infrastructure raises both urban and rural incomes, with larger gains in urban areas, widens the urban-rural income gap, and increases population in treated cities through urban inflows and rural outflows.
-
Interpretation Nudges and Self-Control