This paper explores the dynamics of media chatter about economic reforms using text analysis from about a billion newspaper articles in 28 languages. The paper shows that the intensity of reform chatter increases during economic downturns. This increase is more significant in democracies. Using...

This paper investigates to what extent media impacts political decisions. A viable practical approach to test the relationship between mass media and political actions is through the use of the World Bank's Doing Business data, specifically, by assessing local media coverage of Doing Business...

The effect of structural reforms on growth in Europe and Central Asia is assessed by looking separately at each supply-side channel: capital, labor, and productivity, with the last estimated using the stochastic frontier approach. By controlling for the interaction with the economic cycle, the...

"The authors use a sample of 147 countries to investigate the link between democracy and reforms. Democracy may be conducive to reforms, because politicians have the incentive to embrace growth-enhancing reforms to win elections. By contrast, authoritarian regimes do not have to worry as much...