Media, Demonstrations, and Public Good Delivery: Evidence from World Bank Projects during Natural Disasters

Nicola Limodio

STICERD - Economic Organisation and Public Policy Discussion Papers Series from Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE

Abstract: Media can affect governments and public policy by promoting anti-government demonstrations. Under media pressure, a multitasking government might reallocate effort across tasks, rather than increase the total aggregate, resulting in ambiguous welfare effects. In this paper, I test such a hypothesis using a database of World Bank project indicators, which measures government performance in implementing capital projects. Disasters offer an ideal case study because citizens and the government can differ particularly in their preferences between public capital (reconstruction) and consumption (relief). Therefore, at times of disasters, media might be especially effective in shaping public policy by promoting anti-government demonstrations. Joining capital project indicators with data on disasters, media, and demonstrations,I present the following: (1) within-state variation in floods and media activity for Indian states; (2) within-country variation in disasters and media freedom for 135 countries; (3) a case study using anecdotal and archival evidence on flood response in Ghana, Togo, and Ivory Coast in 2007/2008. In all cases, media activity during disasters is associated with lower capital project performance, higher relief/anti-poverty efforts, and more anti-government demonstrations.

Keywords: Disaster aid; government policy; media; natural disasters (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H84 I38 L82 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-dev and nep-ppm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/eopp/eopp62.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:stieop:62

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in STICERD - Economic Organisation and Public Policy Discussion Papers Series from Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().