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Public Trust and Press Freedom

Author

Listed:
  • Pavel Yakovlev

    (Duquesne University)

  • David Gilson

    (Duquesne University)

Abstract

According to World Public Opinion poll, no country leader enjoyed worldwide trust in 2008. Only the leaders of China, Iran, and Russia received consistently higher trust ratings domestically than abroad. Not incidentally, these countries also score low in political and press freedoms. We build a parsimonious regression model that seeks to explain differences in trust ratings using country and leader characteristics. We find that just nine variables can explain over 60% of the variation in leader trust ratings. One of the strongest associative determinants of leader trust is press freedom.

Suggested Citation

  • Pavel Yakovlev & David Gilson, 2015. "Public Trust and Press Freedom," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(1), pages 214-225.
  • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-14-00706
    as

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    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2015/Volume35/EB-15-V35-I1-P24.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    Cited by:

    1. Marc Oliver Rieger & Mei Wang, 2022. "Trust in Government Actions During the COVID-19 Crisis," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 159(3), pages 967-989, February.
    2. Frye, Timothy & Borisova, Ekaterina, 2016. "Elections, protest and trust in government: A natural experiment from Russia," BOFIT Discussion Papers 9/2016, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    public trust; press freedom; media; bias; nationalism; democracy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C5 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty

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