Media, institutions, and government action: Prevention vs. palliation in the time of cholera

- We study how media and the quality of institutions affect government action.
- Our focus is on preventive vs. palliative effort around a natural disaster.
- More media activity increases palliative effort but reduces preventive effort.
- More democratic institutions lead to more palliative but less preventive effort.
- Empirical evidence based on natural disasters largely supports these hypotheses.

This paper studies how media and the quality of institutions affect government action taken before and after a natural disaster. Provided that more media activity is focused on post-disaster action, we show that more media activity and better democratic institutions both contribute positively to the palliative effort after the disaster, although corruption has a negative effect that decreases as media activity increases. On the preventive effort, however, media and democracy both have a negative effect, as does corruption. We provide empirical evidence based on major cholera epidemics and other natural disasters around the world, which largely support these hypotheses.