Examining the relationship between economic growth and media in different economies: the role of press freedom, media corruption and diversity

Elena Ketteni and Theodora A. Maniou

Journal of Media Economics, 2025, vol. 37, issue 3, 85-104

Abstract: This work aims to examine the relationship between economic growth and media corruption, press freedom, and media diversity in 97 countries from 2002 to 2019. Research in this area is limited, even though the media are a significant institution and driver of growth in many economies. We use non-parametric techniques to establish the shape of these relationships without imposing restrictive functional form assumptions. Our findings suggest that significant and often non-linear relationships do exist; press freedom generally has a positive effect, while media corruption has a negative one. Mixed results are observed from media diversity, in both traditional and online media. Media features do appear to affect economic growth, the effects seem to vary and depend on the group of countries under investigation. Causality tests show that media features do affect growth, but the opposite is not true. These findings could be considered and evaluated for policy implementation.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/08997764.2025.2478855 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:jmedec:v:37:y:2025:i:3:p:85-104

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/HMEC20

DOI: 10.1080/08997764.2025.2478855

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Media Economics is currently edited by Nodir Adilov

More articles in Journal of Media Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().