This is the title of a short series of outstanding lectures held by Andrei Shleifer which is now available online. The first lecture is a fairly general introduction to the economics of persuasion. In his second lecture he presents his latest paper (The Market for News) in which he and his colleague came up with a demand-based theory of media bias. They investigated the market for news under two assumptions: that readers hold beliefs which they like to see confirmed and that newspapers can slant* stories toward these beliefs. They show that, on the topics where readers share common beliefs, competition results in lower prices, but common slanting toward reader biases. However, on topics where reader beliefs diverge (such as politically divisive issues), newspapers segment the market and slant toward extreme positions. In his final lecture he talks about persuasion in financial markets and stock price bubbles. How companies persuade people to buy their shares during bubbles and how intermediaries persuade investors to invest through them. He also points to a paper on hedge funds and the technology bubble which (at first glance) seems to be quite interesting.

related items:
The science of persuasion, Mahalanobis

*"The term “slanting” was introduced by Hayakawa (1940), and defined as “the process of selecting details that are favorable or unfavorable to the subject being described.” Ibid, p. 4