‘Vote for Hollywood: the Effects of US Indirect Propaganda on Italian Elections’ with Mario Cannella
Current Version:
We document an unexplored medium affecting electoral choices: cinema. We study the effects of exposure to Hollywood movies on voting choices during the Cold War in Italy. We employ an instrumental variable approach, combining spatial access to cinema with time variation in the success of U.S. movies at the box office before elections. We find that greater exposure to U.S. movies before elections led to gains for U.S.-endorsed parties, and losses for the Italian Communist Party, while turnout was minimally affected.