>Brad DeLong wrote:
>>
>> No.
>>
>> Britain and Canada are outliers in their regression. Think of
>> Malaysia, or China, if you want a typical country in which the
>> government has a large media share.
>>
>> The government media-inferior health and the government
>> media-inferior education correlations made me think of a possible
>> tie-in with Sen's arguments about famines, publicity, and democracy...
>
>What makes Britain, Canada, France, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and
>Singapore 'outliers' and China and Malaysia 'inliers', ferchrissakes?
>
That there are a lot more countries like China and Malaysia than like
the OECD countries with broadcasting monopolies: the BBC gets swamped
by Turkmenistan TV.
But one of the most interesting things about the paper (not in the
abstract) is that it is a high government ownership share of the
*press*--not broadcasting--that appears to be truly poisonous...
The tie-in with Sen is that I think of his democracy-famine link and
this government-owned media result as both being about the beneficial
effects of what Hirschman calls "voice."
