Peter Leeson and I have a new paper forthcoming in the European Journal of Law and Economics entitled, "The Reformer's Dilemma: Media, Policy Ownership and Reform." The paper can be downloaded here. Here is the abstract:
Current proposals for strengthening policy ownership in reforming economies are fundamentally flawed. Modeling the reform process as a prisoners’ dilemma demonstrates that political agents must overcome this conflict of interests before present proposals for bolstering ownership will work. A politically autonomous mass media is one important mechanism enabling political agents to do this. Reforming countries without free media face an uphill battle overcoming the problems associated with transition. We test our theory by investigating the relationship between media freedom, foreign aid, and economic development in 26 post-socialist transition countries. The results of this analysis support our theory.
This paper is part of a larger project on the role of media in social and institutional change. Pete and I are currently co-authoring a book on the topic entitled, Media, Development and Institutional Change.