Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP18588
Abstract: This paper studies how public opinion on social media affects local governments' procurement of vaccines in China during 2014-2019. To establish causality, we exploit city-level variation in the eruption of online opinion on vaccine safety, instrumented by quasi-random early penetration of social media. We find that governments in cities exposed to stronger social media shocks increased the share of more-transparent procurement and shifted procurement from small local suppliers to reputable nonlocal suppliers. The effect is driven by posts expressing anti-government sentiment instead of posts containing investigative information and is larger in cities where local officials face higher top-down political pressure.
Keywords: social media; government accountability; authoritarian regime; public health
JEL Codes: H4; H7; O5; P2
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Weibo shocks (Y60) | increase in open-bid procurement (H57) |
| Weibo shocks (Y60) | reduction in home bias (F29) |
| Weibo shocks (Y60) | intensified blogging efforts (Y60) |
| Weibo shocks (Y60) | shift in procurement strategy (H57) |