Reform chatter and democracy

Rabah Arezki, Simeon Djankov, Ha Nguyenc and Ivan Yotzov

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We explore the dynamics of media chatter about economic reforms using text analysis from about a billion newspaper articles in 28 languages. We show that the intensity of reform chatter increases during economic downturns. This increase is more significant in democracies. Using instrumental variable techniques, we find the relationship to be causal. We also document that reform chatter is followed by actual reforms, suggesting that democracies benefit from a "self- correcting" mechanism stemming from changing popular attitudes towards reform.

Keywords: reform; chatter; media; business cycle; democracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D70 E30 P10 P40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2020-07-09
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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/118883/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Reform Chatter and Democracy (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:118883

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