Adam Smith Business School

Dr Maria Titova, Vanderbilt University

"Targeted Advertising in Elections"
Tuesday, 23 May, 4 pm
Room 305. Main Building

Abstract

Some elections seem unwinnable for challengers because pivotal voters prefer policies on the opposite sides of the status quo. In this paper, I argue that the challenger can win any such election with positive probability if he uses targeted advertising with verifiable messages. In private ads, the challenger makes each voter believe that his policy is a sufficient improvement over the status quo and wins the election when his policy is sufficiently moderate. Furthermore, his odds of winning increase when voters become more extreme because more extreme voters are more dissatisfied by the status quo and can therefore be persuaded by a wider range of policies.

Bio

Maria Titova is an economic theorist specializing in information and learning in elections and other political economy settings. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Economics and Political Science at Vanderbilt University. Before moving to Nashville, Maria completed a Ph.D. at the UC San Diego Department of Economics in 2021. Her advisors were Renee Bowen and Joel Sobel. She also holds an M.Sc. in Financial Economics and a B.Sc. in Applied Mathematics and Information Science from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia.

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First published: 28 April 2023