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Media Freedom, Bureaucratic Incentives, and the Resource Curse

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  • Georgy Egorov

    ()

  • Sergei Guriev

    ()

  • Konstantin Sonin

    ()

Abstract

How can a non-democratic ruler provide proper incentives for state bureaucracy? In the absense of competitive elections and separation of powers, the ruler has to gather information either from a centralized agency such as a secret service or a decentralized source such as media. The danger of using a secret service is that it can collude with bureaucrats; overcoming collusion is costly. Free media aggregate information and thus constrain bureaucrats, but might also help citizens to coordinate on actions against the incumbent. We endogenize the ruler’s choice in a dynamic model to argue that free media are less likely to emerge in resource-rich economies where the ruler is less interested in providing incentives to his subordinates. We show that this prediction is consistent with both cross-section and panel data.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Centre for Economic Development and Institutions(CEDI), Brunel University in its series CEDI Discussion Paper Series with number 06-10.

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Length: 40 pages
Date of creation: Jun 2006
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:edb:cedidp:06-10

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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Markevich, Andrei, 2007. "How Much Control is Enough? Monitoring and Enforcement under Stalin," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 829, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
  2. Tambovtsev, V., 2012. "Protection of Property Rights and Investment Climate in Russia," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 13(1), pages 163-165.
  3. Hassan Gholipour Fereidouni & Tajul Ariffin Masron & Reza Ekhtiari Amiri, 2011. "The effects of FDI on voice and accountability in the MENA region," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 38(9), pages 802-815, August.
  4. Dutta, Nabamita & Roy, Sanjukta, 2008. "The Role of Foreign Direct Investment on Press Freedom," MPRA Paper 10185, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 18 Jul 2008.
  5. Maria Petrova, 2010. "Mass Media and Special Interest Groups," Working Papers w0144, Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR).
  6. Enikolopov, Ruben & Petrova, Maria & Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina, 2009. "Media and Political Persuasion: Evidence from Russia," CEPR Discussion Papers 7257, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  7. Randolph Luca Bruno, 2006. "Unique Equilibrium in a Model of Rule of Law," LEM Papers Series 2006/16, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
  8. Scott Gehlbach & Konstantin Sonin, 2008. "Government Control of the Media," Working Papers w0126, Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR).
  9. Antonio Cabrales & Esther Hauk, 2009. "Democracy and the curse of natural resources," Working Papers 2009-07, FEDEA.
  10. Timothy Besley & Masayuki Kudamatsu, 2007. "Making Autocracy Work," STICERD - Development Economics Papers - From 2008 this series has been superseded by Economic Organisation and Public Policy Discussion Papers 48, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
  11. Yakovlev, Evgeny & Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina, 2007. "Deregulation of Business," CEPR Discussion Papers 6610, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  12. Ashworth, Scott & Shotts, Kenneth W., 2010. "Does informative media commentary reduce politicians' incentives to pander?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(11-12), pages 838-847, December.
  13. Konstantin Yanovsky & Sergey Zhavoronkov & Elena Reva & Sergey Shulgin & Dmitry Cherny & V Litarchuk, 2007. "Federal Reform Outcome: Influence of Modified Institutions on the Investment Climate in the Regions," Working Papers 0024, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, revised 2007.
  14. William Tompson, 2007. "From "Clientelism" to a "Client-Centred Orientation"? The Challenge of Public Administration Reform in Russia," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 536, OECD Publishing.

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