The Impact of Foreign Direct Investment on Press Freedom

Abstract

In our paper we establish foreign direct investment (FDI) as a major determinant of media freedom. Global integration can strengthen the media sector financially, make it technologically enhanced and can also improve the economic environment as a whole. This, in turn, would work towards the enhancement of media freedom. The sample includes high, middle and low income economies. Using a panel of 115 countries over a period of 20 years, our results reveal that FDI is an absolute necessity for a free and efficient media. The results are robust to various alternate specifications and inclusion of additional control variables. Copyright 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

The interactive impact of press freedom and media reach on corruption

“…The popularity of the index from Freedom House is based on the extensiveness of the data in terms of both countries and time period coverage. It has been used by several cross sectional panel studies on press freedom (see for example, Dutta and Roy, 2009;Sobel et al, 2010;Freille et al, 2007;Chowdhury, 2004;Brunetti and Weder, 2003 to mention a few). The Freedom of Press score is assigned based on twenty three methodology questions that are divided into three categories: the legal environment, the economic environment and the political environment in each country.…”

The extractive industries and development: The resource curse at the micro, meso and macro levels

“…Spending on patronage fuelled by the abundance of mineral rents may have a similar effect (Auty, 2005;Vandewalle, 1998). Mineral rents concentrated in the hands of authoritarian rulers may also suppress democratic aspirations either in the form of excessive spending in internal security (this is what Michael Ross (2001) coins the 'repression effect'; see also Sandbakken, 2006;Tsui, 2010 andGause, 1995) or obstruction of free information (Dutta and Roy, 2009;Egorov et al, 2009;Williams, 2011). The appropriability of the mineral rents by the rulers in power (which for example might increase when mineral industries are nationalised) naturally mediates the resource-democracy relationship (Ross, 2012;Snyder and Bhavnani, 2005).…”

Freedom of information legislation and its impact on press freedom: A cross-national study

“…Increases in economic productivity cause less stress in the political system, and the decreased political stress contributes to increased press freedom. A commonly-held view is that press freedom is a result of economic prosperity (Dutta & Roy, 2009;Jacobsson & Jacobsson, 2002;Norris & Zinnbauer, 2002) since rich countries can afford a free press (Freille et al, 2007). This rationale comes from nation development theorists' conventional argument that increases in per capita income lead to increases in popular demand for civil liberties (de Mesquita & Downs, 2005, p. 78).…”