Political and Economic Determinants of Asynchronous Approval of New GM Events

Abstract

We use a political economy perspective to provide the first empirical analysis of the main political and economic determinants of asynchronous approval (AA) for a variety of countries over the period 2000–2015. The key results that emerge from our paper are the prominent role of regulatory quality and the number of internet users in a particular country in influencing AA across countries. We found that the higher the share of internet users in a country, the lower the AA. Consumer access to the internet makes them less exposed to negative news about genetically modified (GM) products, as they are less influenced by the negative bias of traditional mass media toward biotechnology. Additionally, the better the regulation quality (the more efficiently a government formulates and implements regulation), the shorter the time necessary to approve new GM events, and the lower the AA. Furthermore, our findings confirm that determinants such as corruption, trade relations with stringent markets, and the size of the rural population are also important in explaining AA of GM events.