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Media Freedom and Democracy: Complements or Substitutes in the Fight against Corruption?

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  • Sambit Bhattacharyya
  • Roland Hodler

Abstract

Democracy and media freedom have been suggested as useful tools in the fight against political corruption, but so far their interplay in this fight has received scant attention. We present a game theoretic model which predicts that the corruption-reducing effect of democracy becomes stronger as media freedom increases. Using panel data covering the period 1980-2008 and 126 countries, we find empirical support for this prediction. Our main results hold when we control for the effects of income, time varying common shocks, regional fixed effects and various additional covariates. The complementarity between democracy and media freedom in the fight against corruption is also supported by Indian state level data.

Suggested Citation

  • Sambit Bhattacharyya & Roland Hodler, 2012. "Media Freedom and Democracy: Complements or Substitutes in the Fight against Corruption?," CSAE Working Paper Series 2012-02, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    • Handle: RePEc:csa:wpaper:2012-02
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Eugen Dimant & Guglielmo Tosato, 2018. "Causes And Effects Of Corruption: What Has Past Decade'S Empirical Research Taught Us? A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(2), pages 335-356, April.
    2. Derbali, Ahmed & Trabelsi Masmoudi, Lilia & Zitouna, Habib, 2015. "Democratic transition and foreign direct investment: Transition process matters," MPRA Paper 66057, University Library of Munich, Germany.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Corruption; political institutions; democracy; media freedom;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government

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