Media, Development, and Institutional Change

New Thinking in Political Economy series

Christopher J. Coyne, Mercatus Center and Department of Economics and Peter T. Leeson, Duncan Black Professor of Economics and Law, Department of Economics, George Mason University, US

Media, Development, and Institutional Change investigates mass media’s profound ability to affect institutional change and economic development. The authors use the tools of economics to illuminate the media’s role in enabling and inhibiting political–economic reforms that promote development.

‘Media, Development, and Institutional Change is substantively about the relationship between the media and economic development. But in the course of pursuing this issue, Coyne and Leeson also present the clearest exposition yet in print of the “New Comparative Political Economy”, of which the book itself also constitutes an excellent example. This fact alone makes the book worth reading for all economists interested in the market process and institutional change, regardless of whether or not they are interested in the particular subject of the role of free media in development.’
– Nicholas Adam Curott, Review of Austrian Economics

‘I highly recommend the book. Economists interested in development, public choice and the media will all find that Coyne and Leeson have made a valuable contribution. If economists over the next decade make headway on how to grow the institutions of the market economy, I suspect we will recognize in retrospect that Coyne and Leeson have identified in the media an important channel for institutional reform.’
– Daniel Sutter, Public Choice