The strategic determinants of U.S. human rights reporting: Evidence from the Cold War

Nancy Qian*, David Yanagizawa

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

29 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper uses a country-level panel data set to test the hypothesis that the United States biases its human rights reports of countries based on the latters' strategic value. We use the difference between the U.S. State Department's and Amnesty International's reports as a measure of U.S. "bias." For plausibly exogenous variation in strategic value to the U.S., we compare this bias between U.S. Cold War (CW) allies to non-CW allies, before and after the CW ended. The results show that allying with the U.S. during the CW significantly improved reports on a country's human rights situation from the U.S. State Department relative to Amnesty International

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)446-457
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of the European Economic Association
Volume7
Issue number2-3
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2009

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Economics, Econometrics and Finance(all)

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