微观理论Workshop: Negativity in the news: Supply and Demand

　　时 间：2019年6月6日（周四）10:30 -- 12:00

　　地 点：北京大学经济学院302小教室

　　主讲人：Heng Chen

　　组织人：汪浩 胡岠 胡涛 吴泽南

　　题 目：Negativity in the news: Supply and Demand

　　摘 要：

　　The news market is overwhelmingly negative, i.e., news consumers pay more attention to bad news and media outlets bias their news content towards the negative. We show the demand for negativity can arise when news consumers have doubts about the quality of news outlets and dislike such uncertainty. Uncertainty averse consumers infer the negative news is of higher quality and are more willingly to acquire negative contents. In response, media firms select and frame their news content accordingly. Damaged media reputation or low confidence in news organizations may give rise to negative reporting.

　　主讲人介绍：

　　Heng CHEN finished his PhD studies at the University of Zurich in 2010.  Before he moved to Switzerland, Heng has also studied at Harvard University, Stockholm University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.  Heng specializes in macroeconomics and Chinese Economy.  He works intensively on topics related to economic and political crises, such as bank runs, currency attacks and political collective actions, e.g., the driving force and propagation mechanisms of crises. He is also interested in saving behaviors at both household and firm levels.  In this line of research, he develops dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models with heterogeneous agents or firms. Heng follows the development of Chinese economy closely and works on various pertinent issues.