Julia Cagé

Julia CAGÉ is Full Professor of Economics since 2024 - she joined the Department in 2014 and was tenured in 2021. She is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), where she also leads the CEPR Research and Policy Network on “Media Plurality”, and a Research Fellow at the CESifo Research Network.

From 2018 to 2023, she was the co-director of the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Evaluation of Public Policies (LIEPP)’s “Evaluation of Democracy” research group, and from 2015 to 2022, a Board member of the Agence France Presse (third largest international news agency in the world). 

Her research focuses on political economy, industrial organization and economic history. She is particularly interested in media economics, political participation and political attitudes. Her research has been published in a number of peer-reviewed international journals such as the American Economic Review, the Journal of Public Economics, the Review of Economic Studies, the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, Explorations in Economic History, the Journal of International Economics, and the European Economic Review.

In 2021 she was awarded an European Research Council Starting Grant for her 5-year project Campaign Finance, Information and Influence: A ComprehensIve Approach Using Individual-Level Data and Computer Science Tools (PARTICIPATE) which studies, notably, blindspots in the economic literature on the funding of political parties and the representativity of candidates for their electoral campaigns.

Her latest research projects, selected recently by McCourt Institute for substantial grants in 2022 and 2023, explore issues related to information in the digital age (the spread of disinformation on social media and online news) but also look at resolving them (how to slow down disinformation, how to ensure access to quality information).

In 2023, she was laureate of the Best Young French Economist Award (ex aequo) bestowed by the Le Cercle des économistes and Le Monde and co-laureate of the Yrjö Jahnsson Award in 2025.

Julia Cagé is also well-known to the general public for her books in which she proposes concrete, radical solutions after meticulously scrutinizing her topic. She has authored three books on the media, one of which - Saving the Media. Capitalism, Crowdfunding and Democracy (Paris, Le Seuil, 2015) - was awarded the Special Jury Prize for Best Book on Media of the 2016 edition of the “Prix des Assises du Journalisme”. Her latest critically acclaimed work « The Price of Democracy » (at Fayard in 2018, English edition at Harvard University Press, 2020) was awarded the Prix Pétrarque de l’essai by Le Monde and France Culture in 2019. Most recently she co-authored a book with Thomas Piketty "Une histoire du conflit politique. Elections et inégalités sociales en France, 1789-2022", edited by Seuil and published in September 2023.

After completing her university studies at Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) and Paris School of Economics, Julia Cagé obtained her PhD at Harvard University in 2014.

To learn more about Julia CAGÉ, consult her website

featured publications

• "The Heterogeneous Price of a Vote: Evidence from Multiparty Systems, 1993-2017" (with Yasmine Bekkouche, ULB, and Edgard Dewitte, Sciences Po Paris). Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming.
• "The Production of Information in an Online World" (with Nicolas Hervé, INA, and Marie-Luce Viaud, INA), Review of Economic Studies, 2020, 87(5): 2126-2164.
• “Media Competition, Information Provision and Political Participation: Evidence from French Local Newspapers and Elections, 1944-2014”, Journal of Public Economics, 2020, 85.
• L'Information est un bien public. Refonder la propriété des médias, with Benoît Huet. Paris, Le Seuil, 2021
• Le prix de la démocratie, Paris, Fayard, 2018.
• "Small Campaign Donors" (with Laurent Bouton, Georgetown U, Edgard Dewitte, SciencesPo Paris, and Vincent Pons, Harvard Business School).
• "Hosting Media Bias: Evidence from the Universe of French Television and Radio Shows, 2002-2020" (with Moritz Hengel, Sciences Po Paris, Nicolas Hervé, INA, and Camille Urvoy, University of Mannheim).
• "Is Charitable Giving Political? New Evidence from Wealth and Income Tax Returns" (with Malka Guillot, HEC Liège).
• "Social Media and Newsroom Production Decisions" (with Nicolas Hervé, INA, and Béatrice Mazoyer, INA).
• "It Takes Money to Make MPs : New Evidence from 150 Years of British Campaign Spending" (with Edgard Dewitte, Sciences Po Paris). Submitted.

See all publications

• Julia Cagé, Thomas Piketty. Le début de la fin de la tripartition ? Élections européennes et inégalités sociales en France, 1994-2024. 2024. ⟨halshs-04753460⟩
• Julia Cagé, Thomas Piketty. Une histoire du conflit politique. Elections et inégalités sociales en France. 1789-2022.. Seuil, 864 p., 2023, 978-2021454543. ⟨halshs-04174698⟩
• Julia Cagé, Malka Guillot. Comportement des donateurs fortunés : le poids des motivations politiques. 2023. ⟨halshs-04164850⟩
• Julia Cagé, Malka Guillot. Comportement des donateurs fortunés : le poids des motivations politiques. 2023. ⟨halshs-04083681⟩
• Julia Cagé, Malka Guillot. Is Charitable Giving Political? Evidence from Wealth and Income Tax Return. 2023. ⟨halshs-04173178⟩
• Julia Cagé, Nicolas Hervé, Béatrice Mazoyer. Social Media Influence Mainstream Media: Evidence from Two Billion Tweets. 2022. ⟨hal-03877907⟩
• Julia Cagé, Nicolas Hervé, Béatrice Mazoyer. Social Media and Newsroom Production Decisions. 2022. ⟨hal-03811318⟩
• Julia Cage, Edgard Dewitte. When Does Money Matter for Elections?. 2022, ⟨10.25647/liepp.pb.58⟩. ⟨hal-03619549⟩
• Julia Cagé, Moritz Hengel, Nicolas Hervé, Camille Urvoy. Hosting Media Bias: Evidence from the Universe of French Broadcasts, 2002-2020. 2022. ⟨hal-03878119⟩
• Yasmine Bekkouche, Julia Cage, Edgard Dewitte. The Heterogeneous Price of a Vote: Evidence from Multiparty Systems, 1993-2017. Journal of Public Economics, 2022, 206, ⟨10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104559⟩. ⟨hal-03389172⟩
• Julia Cagé, Anna Dagorret, Pauline Grosjean, Saumitra Jha. Heroes and Villains: The Effects of Heroism on Autocratic Values and Nazi Collaboration in France. American Economic Review, In press. ⟨hal-03880094⟩
• Charles Angelucci, Julia Cagé, Michael Sinkinson. Media Competition and News Diets. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, In press. ⟨hal-03880088⟩
• Laurent Bouton, Julia Cagé, Edgard Dewitte, Vincent Pons. Small Campaign Donors. 2021. ⟨hal-03878175⟩
• Julia Cage, Anna Dagorret, Pauline Grosjean, Saumitra Jha. Heroes and Villains: The Effects of Combat Heroism on Autocratic Values and Nazi Collaboration in France. 2021. ⟨hal-03389171v2⟩
• Julia Cage, Edgard Dewitte. It Takes Money to Make MPs: Evidence from 150 Years of British Campaign Spending. 2021. ⟨hal-03384143⟩
• Julia Cagé, Caroline Le Pennec, Elisa Mougin. Corporate Donations and Political Rhetoric: Evidence from a National Ban. 2021. ⟨hal-03877943⟩
• Julia Cagé, Malka Guillot. Is Charitable Giving Political? Evidence from Wealth and Income Tax Returns. 2021. ⟨hal-03877993⟩
• Julia Cagé, Benoît Huet. L'Information est un bien public. Seuil, 2021, 9782021483154. ⟨hal-03936542⟩
• Julia Cagé. From Philanthropy to Democracy: Rethinking Governance and Funding of High-Quality News in the Digital Age. Lucy Bernholz; Hélène Landemore; Rob Reich. Digital Technologies and Democratic Theory, University of Chicago Press, pp.241-273, 2021, 9780226748573. ⟨hal-03947767⟩
• Julien Talpin, Antonio Delfini, Marie-Hélène Bacqué, Romain Badouard, Hélène Balazard, et al.. Une citoyenneté réprimée. 100 cas de restrictions des libertés associatives, 12 pistes pour mieux les protéger. [Rapport de recherche] 1, Observatoire des libertés associatives. 2020, pp.49. ⟨hal-03096913⟩
• Julia Cagé. Libres et égaux en voix. Fayard, 2020, 9782213717500. ⟨hal-03936561⟩
• Julia Cagé, Valeria Rueda. Sex and the Mission: The Conflicting Effects of Early Christian Missions on HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa. Journal of Demographic Economics, 2020, 86 (3), pp.213-257. ⟨10.1017/dem.2019.16⟩. ⟨hal-03877466⟩
• Béatrice Mazoyer, Julia Cagé, Nicolas Hervé, Céline Hudelot. A French Corpus for Event Detection on Twitter. Twelfth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, 2020, Marseille, France. pp.6220-6227. ⟨hal-03947820⟩
• Charles Angelucci, Julia Cage, Michael Sinkinson. Media Competition and News Diets. 2020. ⟨hal-03393063⟩
• Béatrice Mazoyer, Nicolas Hervé, Céline Hudelot, Julia Cage. Représentations lexicales pour la détection non supervisée d'événements dans un flux de tweets : étude sur des corpus français et anglais. Extraction et Gestion des connaissances, EGC 2020, Jan 2020, Bruxelles, Belgique. ⟨hal-02432990⟩
• Julia Cage, Nicolas Hervé, Marie-Luce Viaud. The Production of Information in an Online World. Review of Economic Studies, 2019, ⟨10.1093/restud/rdz061⟩. ⟨hal-03567007⟩
• Julia Cage. Media competition, information provision and political participation:Evidence from French local newspapers and elections, 1944–2014. Journal of Public Economics, 2019, Forthcoming in print, ⟨10.1016/j.jpubeco.2019.104077⟩. ⟨hal-03567022⟩
• Charles Angelucci, Julia Cage. Newspapers in Times of Low Advertising Revenues. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2019, 11 (3), pp.319 - 364. ⟨10.1257/mic.20170306⟩. ⟨hal-03391880⟩
• Guy Rolnik, Julia Cagé, Joshua Gans, Ellen Goodman, Brian Knight, et al.. Protecting Journalism in the Age of Digital Platforms. Committee for the Study of Digital Platforms - Media Subcommittee Report, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State; The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. 2019. ⟨hal-03947806⟩
• Béatrice Mazoyer, Nicolas Hervé, Céline Hudelot, Julia Cage. Réduire les biais dans la collecte de tweets. Journée DAHLIA : "Informatique et Humanités numériques : quelles problématiques pour quels domaines ?", Jun 2019, Nantes, France. ⟨hal-02339757⟩
• Yasmine Bekkouche, Julia Cage. The Heterogeneous Price of a Vote: Evidence from France, 1993-2014. 2019. ⟨hal-03393084⟩
• Julia Cage, Nicolas Hervé, Marie-Luce Viaud. The Production of Information in an Online World: Is Copy Right?. 2019. ⟨hal-03393091⟩
• Julia Cage, Valeria Rueda. Sex and the Mission: The Conflicting Effects of Early Christian Missions on HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. 2019. ⟨hal-03393101⟩
• Julia Cage, Lucie Gadenne. Tax Revenues and the Fiscal Cost of Trade Liberalization, 1792-2006. Explorations in Economic History, 2018, 70, pp.1 - 24. ⟨10.1016/j.eeh.2018.07.004⟩. ⟨hal-03391923⟩
• Julia Cagé. Le prix de la démocratie. Fayard, pp.455, 2018, 9782213704616. ⟨hal-03256839⟩
• Béatrice Mazoyer, Julia Cage, Céline Hudelot, Marie-Luce Viaud. Real-time collection of reliable and representative tweets datasets related to news events. First International Workshop on Analysis of Broad Dynamic Topics over Social Media (BroDyn 2018) co-located with the 40th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2018), Mar 2018, Grenoble, France. ⟨hal-02321957⟩
• Julia Cage, Nicolas Hervé, Marie-Luce Viaud. The Production of Information in an Online World: Is Copy Right?. 2018. ⟨hal-03393151⟩
• Julia Cage, Yasmine Bekkouche. The Price of a Vote: Evidence from France, 1993-2014. 2018. ⟨hal-03393149⟩
• Julia Cage, Olivier Godechot, Etienne Fize, Maria Camila Porras. Who Owns the Media?. [Research Report] Laboratoire interdisciplinaire d'évaluation des politiques publiques. 2017, pp.136. ⟨hal-03612863⟩
• Julia Cage. Qui possède les médias ?. LIEPP Policy Brief n°33, 2017, ⟨10.25647/liepp.pb.33⟩. ⟨hal-03391947⟩
• Julia Cage. Media Competition, Information Provision and Political Participation: Evidence from French Local Newspapers and Elections, 1944-2014. 2017. ⟨hal-03393164⟩
• Julia Cage, Valeria Rueda. Sex and the Mission: The Conflicting Effects of Early Christian Investments on the HIV Epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. 2017. ⟨hal-03393166⟩
• Julia Cage, Nicolas Hervé, Marie-Luce Viaud. The Production of Information in an Online World: Is Copy Right?. 2017. ⟨hal-03393171⟩
• Julia Cagé, Nicolas Hervé, Marie-Luce Viaud. L'information à tout prix. INA, pp.170, 2017, Médias et Humanités, 9782869382480. ⟨hal-01521888⟩
• Julia Cage, Valeria Rueda. The Devil is in the Detail: Christian Missions’ Heterogeneous Effects on Development in sub-Saharan Africa. Stelios Michalopoulos; Elias Papaioannou. The Long Economic and Political Shadow of History, Volume 2, Centre for Economic Policy Research, pp.98 - 109, 2017, 9780995470163. ⟨hal-03259774⟩
• Julia Cage, Valeria Rueda. The Long-Term Effects of the Printing Press in Sub-Saharan Africa. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2016, 8 (3), pp.69-99. ⟨10.1257/app.20140379⟩. ⟨hal-03571242⟩
• Philippe Aghion, Ufuk Akcigit, Julia Cage, William Kerr. Taxation, Corruption, and Growth. European Economic Review, 2016, 86, pp.24 - 51. ⟨10.1016/j.euroecorev.2016.01.012⟩. ⟨halshs-01496936⟩
• Julia Cage. Measuring Policy Performance: Can We Do Better than the World Bank?. Akbar Noman; Joseph Stiglitz. Industrial Policy and Economic Transformation in Africa, Columbia University Press, pp.268 - 292, 2015, 9780231175180. ⟨hal-03392964⟩
• Julia Cage. Improving upon the World Bank's Country Policy and Institutional Assessment: A New Performance Indicator Based on Aid Effectiveness. Journal of Globalization and Development, 2015, pp.1 - 21. ⟨10.1515/jgd-2013-0007⟩. ⟨hal-03392998⟩
• Julia Cage. Sauver les médias. Éditions du Seuil, pp.115, 2015, La République des Idées, 9782021219555. ⟨hal-01502405⟩