| By: |
Ruben Enikolopov (Harvard University);
Maria Petrova (Harvard University);
Ekaterina Zhuravskaya (New Economic School (NES), Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR), Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)) |
| Abstract: |
Governments control media in much of the developing world. Does this have an
effect on political choices of voters? We address this question using
exogenous variation in the availability of the signal of the only independent
from the government national TV channel in Russia during the 1999
parliamentary elections. We find that the presence of an independent source of
political news on TV significantly decreased the vote in favor of the
government party and increased the vote in favor of the opposition parties. We
find that the difference in TV coverage significantly changed voting behavior
even controlling for voters’ inclinations just one month prior to the
elections. The effects we find are larger than those found in established
democracies. |
| Date: |
2007–12 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cfr:cefirw:w0112&r=cis |