ECONOMIC NEWS ON TELEVISION: THE DETERMINANTS OF COVERAGE

This paper examines the television networks' coverage of theunemployment rate, the inflation rate as measured by the ConsumerPrice Index, and the growth rate of real GNP over the twelveyears from 1973 through 1984. This time period includes twomajor recessions, two severe bursts of inflation, and threepresidential elections. A common complaint is that the networksoveremphasize bad economic news. Using two measures of coverage,this paper examines whether the television networks give greatercoverage to these statistics when they are deteriorating. Theempirical results reveal that the networks do give greater coverageto bad economic news during nonelection years, but this patterndisappears during election years. The empirical results alsoreveal that presidential comments are very powerful in shapingthe amount of coverage given to these economic statistics.     

BELIEVING IN ECONOMIC THEORIES: SEX, LIES, EVIDENCE, TRUST, AND IDEOLOGY

Political economics views heterogeneity of political preferences largely as a reflection of heterogeneity in valuations of known policy outcomes. Voters, however, may be uncertain about policy outcomes, in part, because of uncertainty about how the economic world actually works. Heterogeneity of people's beliefs about how well economic theories predict outcomes could then affect policy through democratic institutions. Using a combination of experimental and survey techniques drawn from economics and social and political psychology, we examine several potential sources of heterogeneity in beliefs about the predictive content of supply and demand theory, with a particular focus on the role of ideology. ( JEL A110, A130, C420, C900)     

Habermas's Theological Turn?

Since the turn of the millennium Jürgen Habermas's contributions to social and political theory have been increasingly turning toward matters of religious and theological relevance. This article weighs up the import and coherence of Habermas's recent reflections on religious belief and its relationship to reason and modernity in Western philosophical culture. At the forefront of the analysis stands Habermas's conception of appropriate “limits” and “boundaries” between the domains of knowledge and faith and the possibility and desirability of a process of “discursive translation” of contents of religious language into forms of secularized, universalizing moral argument. The article defends the thesis that Habermas's project of a rapprochement between contents of religious language and norms of scientific thinking founders on its attempt to reconcile too many different, conceptually centrifugal tendencies. However, these difficulties and inconsistencies in Habermas's recent thinking remain instructive and ought to continue to engage the interest of scholars concerned today with the question of how far the philosophy of the social sciences can and cannot accommodate commitments to theism in the practice of research.