Chris and I have a new paper that investigates the role of mass media as a mechanism of institutional change. Here's the abstract:
A large literature establishes the connection between institutions and economic performance. Comparatively little work, however, explores the process of institutional change. How do development-enhancing institutions emerge where they do not already exist? This paper investigates this question by examining the role of mass media as a mechanism of institutional change. Our analysis considers three case studies: Mexico, Russia, and Poland. We find that a free media facilitates institutional change in the direction of liberal economic and political institutions. In contrast, where government owns or controls the media, media’s ability to facilitate such change is constrained.
This research is part of a series of papers we have written on the role of media in economic development, such as "Read All About It!", "Manipulating the Media", "The Reformers' Dilemma", "Inside the Black Box", and "Culture, Common Knowledge and Post-Conflict Reconstruction".
The themes taken up in these papers are also considered in a book we're working on entitled, Media, Development, and Institutional Change. Read a draft of the first chapter, which lays out the book's tentative contents, here.