Politicians under investigation: The news Media's effect on the likelihood of resignation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Garz, Marcel; Soerensen, Jil
• 署名单位: University of Hamburg
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2017.07.007
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 82-91
• 关键词: News media; Political accountability; PROSECUTION; Resignation

摘要

This paper studies the effect of news media on the probability of resigning from office of politicians being subject to criminal investigation. Using data on cases in which the political immunity of German representatives was lifted, we find that resignations are more common when the media covers the case intensely. The amount of this news coverage, in turn, depends on the availability of other newsworthy, exogenous events. Therefore, we instrument for coverage of liftings of immunity with the overall news pressure. We estimate the causal effect and find that a change from no coverage to the mean coverage increases the likelihood of resignation by 6.4 percentage points. The effect is likely driven by the crowding out of reports on politicians with the same ideology as the newspaper, rather than reports on representatives with different political leanings. There is no evidence that the reporting affects the chances of conviction. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.