IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/wbecrv/v27y2013i3p413-436.html

Mass Media and Public Policy: Global Evidence from Agricultural Policies

Author

Listed:
  • Alessandro Olper
  • Johan Swinnen

Abstract

Mass media play a crucial role in information distribution and in the political market and public policy making. Theory predicts that information provided by the mass media reflects the media's incentives to provide news to different groups in society and affects these groups' influence in policy making. We use data on agricultural policy from 69 countries spanning a wide range of development stages and media markets to test these predictions. Our empirical results are consistent with theoretical hypotheses that public support for agriculture is affected by the mass media. In particular, an increase in media (television) diffusion is associated with policies that benefit the majority to a greater extent and is correlated with a reduction in agriculture taxation in poor countries and a reduction in the subsidization of agriculture in rich countries, ceteris paribus. The empirical results are consistent with the hypothesis that increased competition in commercial media reduces transfers to special interest groups and contributes to more efficient public policies. Copyright 2013, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Alessandro Olper & Johan Swinnen, 2013. "Mass Media and Public Policy: Global Evidence from Agricultural Policies," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 27(3), pages 413-436.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:wbecrv:v:27:y:2013:i:3:p:413-436
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/wber/lht008
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alessandro Olper & Johan Swinnen, 2013. "Mass Media and Public Policy: Global Evidence from Agricultural Policies," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 27(3), pages 413-436.
    2. Resnick, Danielle & Babu, Suresh & Haggblade, Steven & Hendriks, Sheryl L. & Mather, David, "undated". "Conceptualizing Drivers Of Policy Change In Agriculture, Nutrition, And Food Security: The Kaleidoscope Model," Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy Research Papers 258732, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security (FSP).
    3. Vigani, Mauro & Olper, Alessandro, 2013. "GMO standards, endogenous policy and the market for information," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 32-43.
    4. Zhike Lv & Ting Xu, 2019. "Do economic sanctions affect protectionism? Evidence from agricultural support," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 27-42, March.
    5. Katja Pietrzyck & Nora Berke & Vanessa Wendel & Julia Steinhoff-Wagner & Sebastian Jarzębowski & Brigitte Petersen, 2021. "Understanding the Importance of International Quality Standards Regarding Global Trade in Food and Agricultural Products: Analysis of the German Media," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-20, April.
    6. Briones Alonso, Elena & Swinnen, Johan, 2016. "Who are the producers and consumers? Value chains and food policy effects in the wheat sector in Pakistan," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 40-58.
    7. Kym Anderson, 2016. "Agricultural Trade, Policy Reforms, and Global Food Security," Palgrave Studies in Agricultural Economics and Food Policy, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-137-46925-0, January.
    8. Kym Anderson & Anna Strutt, 2023. "From re-instrumenting to re-purposing farm support policies," Departmental Working Papers 2023-04, The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics.
    9. Wanki Moon & Gabriel Pino, 2018. "Do U.S. citizens support government intervention in agriculture? Implications for the political economy of agricultural protection," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 49(1), pages 119-129, January.
    10. Kym Anderson & Gordon Rausser & Johan Swinnen, 2013. "Political Economy of Public Policies: Insights from Distortions to Agricultural and Food Markets," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(2), pages 423-477, June.
    11. Elena Briones Alonso & Johan Swinnen, 2015. "A Value Chain Approach to Measuring Distortions to Incentives and Food Policy Effects (with application to Pakistan’s grain policy)," Working Papers id:6895, eSocialSciences.
    12. Nith, Kosal & Ly, Singhong, 2018. "Reinvigorating Cambodian agriculture: Transforming from extensive to intensive agriculture," MPRA Paper 93091, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 23 Dec 2018.
    13. Elnaz Moghimi & Mary E Wiktorowicz, 2019. "Regulating the Fast-Food Landscape: Canadian News Media Representation of the Healthy Menu Choices Act," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(24), pages 1-22, December.
    14. Naomi Hossain, 2018. "How the international media framed ‘food riots’ during the global food crises of 2007–12," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 10(3), pages 677-688, June.
    15. Ramalho,Rita & Saltane,Valentina, 2019. "Does Media Stimulate Reform Efforts ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 8984, The World Bank.
    16. Nith, Kosal & Ly, Singhong, 2018. "Reinvigorating Cambodian agriculture: Transforming from extensive to intensive agriculture," MPRA Paper 93086, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 23 Dec 2018.
    17. Mihai Mutascu, 2012. "Taxation under media capture," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(4), pages 2752-2767.
    18. Sen Sharma, Kanchan & Jothiprakash, V., 2024. "Reviewing the reportage of land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement issues in mainstream Indian Media," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    19. Strömberg, David & Prat, Andrea, 2011. "The Political Economy of Mass Media," CEPR Discussion Papers 8246, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • Q18 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agricultural Policy; Food Policy; Animal Welfare Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:wbecrv:v:27:y:2013:i:3:p:413-436. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wrldbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.