Press Freedom and the Global Economy: The Cost of Slipping Backwards

ABSTRACT

This article examines the effects of press freedom (as defined by the US-based Freedom House) on economic growth for 97 countries over four decades (1972–2014). Acknowledging that the idea of “press freedom” carries with it a weight of ethnocentric assumptions, our empirical analysis finds that US understandings of deterioration in press freedom are detrimental to a nation’s economy. Further, we find that countries do not fully recover economically if their press freedoms are compromised, even if the rights of media are restored. This is consistent with emerging literature highlighting the suppressive long-term effects censorship may exert on citizen desire for a free press. We find that the relationship between press freedom and economic performance varies, particularly depending upon the education level of a nation’s workforce, which is consistent with notions that education can be linked to a demand for a free press.

KEYWORDS:

• Media independence
• press freedom
• economic growth
• economic development
• cross-country studies
• journalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 We thank an anonymous reviewer for making this point.

2 We thank an anonymous reviewer for bringing this to our attention.

3 Based on the Levin, Lin, and James Chu (2002), ADF-Fisher χ² (Maddala and Wu 1999), and Breitung (2001) test results, we reject the presence of a unit root in all three-log differenced variables at the 1% level of significance.

4 In order to investigate the issue of reverse causality, we have estimated two logistic regression models in which both education and income are allowed to drive changes in press freedom. The findings clearly suggest that education can improve the likelihood of gains to press freedom, whereas an increase in income lessens the chance of worsening press freedom. These estimation results are available from the authors upon request.