Who Captures the Power of the Pen?
研究了政府控制如何影响媒体作为信息中介和公司监督者的角色，比较了中国国有控制媒体和市场导向媒体所写新闻文章的质量和公司治理效果。
We study how government control affects the roles of the media as an information intermediary and a corporate monitor. Comparing a large sample of news articles written by state-controlled and market-oriented Chinese media, we find that articles by the market-oriented media are more critical, more accurate, more comprehensive, and timelier than those by the state-controlled media. Moreover, only articles by the market-oriented media have a significant corporate governance impact. Subsample analyses, interviews with journalists, and a survey of university students suggest that the market-oriented media’s superior effects are explained by their operating efficiency and independence. Received December 21, 2014; editorial decision January 13, 2017 by Editor Andrew Karolyi