Economics Seminar: Media Influence and Political Power: Evidence from the Rise of Berlusconi

When?

Wednesday 3 October 2012, 16:00 to 16:30

Where?

40AD00

Open to:

Public, Staff, Students

Speaker:

Dr. Andrea Tesei

Dr. Andrea Tesei (Queen Mary)

"Media Influence and Political Power: Evidence from the Rise of Berlusconi" (with R.Durante (PSE) and P.Pinotti (Bocconi))

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of the diff usion of commercial television on political behavior and electoral competition in the context of Italy. We exploit differences across municipalities in the early availability of Silvio Berlusconi's private TV network, Mediaset, attributable to geomorphologic characteristics and controlling for the endogeneity of transmitters location and power. We document that municipalities that had access to Mediaset channels prior to 1985, displayed signi cantly higher electoral support for Berlusconi's
party in 1994, when he first run for office. Our results suggest that pre-1985 exposure to Mediaset increases center-right vote shares by 1 to 2 percentage points. This effect is very significant and robust to several speci cations and falsi cation tests. In particular, placebo
tests show that pre-Mediaset exposure is not correlated with the vote share of any other party - both on the right and on the left - in any elections before or after 1994.