Media Freedom, Bureaucratic Incentives, and the Resource Curse

Georgy Egorov, Sergei Guriev and Konstantin Sonin

No w0063, Working Papers from Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR)

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.

Keywords: media freedom; non-democratic politics; bureaucracy; resource curse (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D80 P16 Q4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2006-02, Revised 2006-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Media Freedom, Bureaucratic Incentives, and the Resource Curse (2007)
Working Paper: Media Freedom, Bureaucratic Incentives and the Resource Curse (2006)
Working Paper: Media Freedom, Bureaucratic Incentives, and the Resource Curse (2006)
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