Media Capture and Local Government Accountability

This paper mainly discusses the effects of media capture on local government accountability in undemocratic countries. Firstly, we construct the models with and without media capture from the perspective of incentive theory. Secondly, we conduct a comparative analysis between the outcomes with and without media capture. The analysis shows that no media capture decreases the local official´s equilibrium efficiency wage under whatever conditions, and at the same time makes the central government´s constraint to incentivize the local official to exert effort easier to be satisfied under some conditions, while harder to be satisfied under other conditions.