andrea tesei
Queen Mary, University of London, Economics and Finance, Faculty Member
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We study the political impact of entertainment television in Italy exploiting the staggered introduction of Berlusconi's commercial TV network, Mediaset, in the early 1980s. We find that individuals with early access to Mediaset... more
We study the political impact of entertainment television in Italy exploiting the staggered introduction of Berlusconi's commercial TV network, Mediaset, in the early 1980s. We find that individuals with early access to Mediaset all-entertainment content were more likely to vote for Berlusconi's party in 1994, when he first ran for office. The effect persists for five elections and is driven by heavy TV viewers, namely the very young and the elders. Regarding possible mechanisms, we find that individuals exposed to entertainment TV as children were less cognitively sophisticated and civicminded as adults, and ultimately more vulnerable to Berlusconi's populist rhetoric
Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-jcr-10.1177_00220027211042664 for Oil Price Shocks and Conflict Escalation: Onshore versus Offshore by Jørgen Juel Andersen, Frode Martin Nordvik and Andrea Tesei in Journal of Conflict Resolution
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Caselli, Francesco, and Tesei, Andrea, (2016) "Resource Windfalls, Political Regimes, and Political Stability." Review of Economics and Statistics 98:3, 573-590
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Existing studies of social capital formation in US metropolitan areas have found that social capital is lower when there is more income inequality and greater racial fragmentation. I add to this literature by examining the role of income... more
Existing studies of social capital formation in US metropolitan areas have found that social capital is lower when there is more income inequality and greater racial fragmentation. I add to this literature by examining the role of income inequality between racial groups (racial income inequality). I find that greater racial income inequality reduces social capital. Also, racial fragmentation is no longer a significant determinant of social capital once racial income inequality is accounted for. This result is consistent with a simple conceptual framework where concurrent differences in race and income are especially detrimental for social capital formation. I find empirical support for further implications deriving from this assumption. In particular, I show that racial income inequality has a more detrimental effect in more racially fragmented communities and that trust falls more in minority groups than in the majority group when racial income inequality increases. ∗PhD Candidate,...
We study the political impact of commercial television in Italy exploiting the staggered introduction of Berlusconi’s private TV network, Mediaset, in the early 1980s. We find that individuals with early access to Mediaset... more
We study the political impact of commercial television in Italy exploiting the staggered introduction of Berlusconi’s private TV network, Mediaset, in the early 1980s. We find that individuals with early access to Mediaset all-entertainment content were more likely to vote for Berlusconi’s party in 1994, when he first ran for office. The effect persists for five elections and is driven by heavy TV viewers, namely the very young and the elderly. Regarding possible mechanisms, we find that individuals exposed to entertainment TV as children were less cognitively sophisticated and civic-minded as adults, and ultimately more vulnerable to Berlusconi’s populist rhetoric. (JEL D72, L82, M31, Z13)
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We are very grateful to Antonio Ciccone for many discussions and to Tim Besley, Silvana Tenreyro, and seminar participants at LSE and UPF for comments. Caselli gratefully acknowledges the support of CEP, and Banco de España, the latter... more
We are very grateful to Antonio Ciccone for many discussions and to Tim Besley, Silvana Tenreyro, and seminar participants at LSE and UPF for comments. Caselli gratefully acknowledges the support of CEP, and Banco de España, the latter through the Banco de España Professorship, and the hospitality of CREI, where the project was initiated. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.
We investigate the long-term political effects of early exposure to Berlusconi’s TV network, Mediaset, exploiting its staggered introduction over the national territory and variation in signal reception due to idiosyncratic... more
We investigate the long-term political effects of early exposure to Berlusconi’s TV network, Mediaset, exploiting its staggered introduction over the national territory and variation in signal reception due to idiosyncratic geomorphological factors. We find that municipalities exposed to Mediaset prior to 1985 exhibit greater electoral support for Berlusconi’s party- between 1 and 2 percentage points- when he first ran for office in 1994, relative to municipalities that were exposed only later on. The difference is extremely persistent, disappearing only with the elections of 2013- about 20 years after the entry of Berlusconi into politics. Any effect of differential exposure before 1985 can hardly be explained by partisan bias in the news, as the latter were introduced on Mediaset channels only starting in 1991, at which time the network was available to the entire population. Instead, we present evidence that earlier exposure to commercial TV is associated with a substantial decli...
Abstract: We examine the effect of oil price fluctuations on democratic institutions over the 1960-2007 period. We also exploit the very persistent response of income to oil price fluctuations to study the effect of persistent (oil... more
Abstract: We examine the effect of oil price fluctuations on democratic institutions over the 1960-2007 period. We also exploit the very persistent response of income to oil price fluctuations to study the effect of persistent (oil price-driven) income shocks on democracy. Our results indicate that countries with greater net oil exports over GDP see improvements in democratic institutions following upturns in international oil prices. We estimate that a 1 percentage point increase in per capita GDP growth due to a positive oil price shock increases the Polity democracy score by around 0.2 percentage points on impact and by around 2 percentage points in the long run. The effect on the probability of a democratic transition is around 0.4 percentage points.
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We investigate the political impact of entertainment television in Italy over the past thirty years by exploiting the staggered introduction of Silvio Berlusconi’s commercial TV network, Mediaset, in the early 1980s. We find that... more
We investigate the political impact of entertainment television in Italy over the past thirty years by exploiting the staggered introduction of Silvio Berlusconi’s commercial TV network, Mediaset, in the early 1980s. We find that individuals in municipalities that had access to Mediaset prior to 1985 when the network only featured light entertainment programs were significantly more likely to vote for Berlusconi’s party in 1994, when he first ran for office. This effect persists for almost two decades and five elections, and is especially pronounced for heavy TV viewers, namely the very young and the old. We relate the extreme persistence of the effect to the relative incidence of these age groups in the voting population, and explore different mechanisms through which early exposure to entertainment content may have influenced their political attitudes.
Existing studies of trust formation in U.S. metropolitan areas have found that trust is lower when there is more income inequality and greater racial fragmentation. I add to this literature by examining the role of income inequality... more
Existing studies of trust formation in U.S. metropolitan areas have found that trust is lower when there is more income inequality and greater racial fragmentation. I add to this literature by examining the role of income inequality between racial groups (racial income inequality). I find that greater racial income inequality reduces trust. Also, racial fragmentation is no longer a significant determinant of trust once racial income inequality is accounted for. I also show that racial income inequality has a more detrimental effect in more racially fragmented communities and that trust falls more in minority groups when racial income inequality increases. The results hold under both least squares and instrumental variable estimation.
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∗We thank Alberto Alesina, Filipe Campante, Antonio Ciccone, Stefano DellaVigna, Ruben Enikolopov, Ray Fisman, Greg Huber, Brian Knight, Valentino Larcinese, Marco Manacorda, Torsten Persson, Barbara Petrongolo, Andrei Shleifer, Francesco... more
∗We thank Alberto Alesina, Filipe Campante, Antonio Ciccone, Stefano DellaVigna, Ruben Enikolopov, Ray Fisman, Greg Huber, Brian Knight, Valentino Larcinese, Marco Manacorda, Torsten Persson, Barbara Petrongolo, Andrei Shleifer, Francesco Sobbrio, Joachim Voth, David Weil, Katia Zhuravskaya, four anonymous referees, and seminar participants at Bocconi, CREI, NYU, MIT, Sciences Po, Brown, Dartmouth, Sorbonne, WZB, Surrey, Queen Mary, Yale, EIEF, LSE, Namur, Bank of Italy, Warwick, UPF, and participants at the AEA Meetings, the EUI Conference on Communications and Media Markets, and the Lisbon Meeting on Institutions and Political Economy for helpful comments. We are very grateful to Ben Olken and Ruben Enikolopov for their help with the ITM software. We thank Nicola D’Amelio and Giuseppe Piraino for their assistance with data collection, Giovanni Sciacovelli for excellent research assistance, and Laura Litvine for her outstanding help with the digitization of the transmitters data. R...
We investigate the electoral effects of early exposure to Silvio Berlusconi‚Aos commercial television network, Mediaset, exploiting its staggered expansion across Italian munic- ipalities during the 1980s. We find that municipalities with... more
We investigate the electoral effects of early exposure to Silvio Berlusconi‚Aos commercial television network, Mediaset, exploiting its staggered expansion across Italian munic- ipalities during the 1980s. We find that municipalities with access to Mediaset prior to 1985 exhibited greater support for Berlusconi‚Aos party in 1994, when he first ran for office, and in the four following elections. This effect cannot be attributed to pro- Berlusconi news bias since no news programs were broadcast on Mediaset until 1991, when access to the network was already ubiquitous. We discuss alternative channels through which exposure to non-news content may have influenced Mediaset viewers‚Ao political attitudes.
Research Interests: Political Science, Politics, Mary Queen of Scots, Voting, Mass media, and 9 moreYale, MIT, NYU, LSE, Surrey, Sciences Po, Sorbonne, BROWN, and Namur
We investigate the long-term political effects of early exposure to Berlusconi’s TV network, Mediaset, exploiting its staggered introduction over the national territory and variation in signal reception due to idiosyncratic... more
We investigate the long-term political effects of early exposure to Berlusconi’s TV network, Mediaset, exploiting its staggered introduction over the national territory and variation in signal reception due to idiosyncratic geomorphological factors. We find that municipalities exposed to Mediaset prior to 1985 exhibit greater electoral support for Berlusconi’s party between 1 and 2 percentage points when he first ran for office in 1994, relative to municipalities that were exposed only later on. The difference is extremely persistent, disappearing only with the elections of 2013 about 20 years after the entry of Berlusconi into politics. Any effect of differential exposure before 1985 can hardly be explained by partisan bias in the news, as the latter were introduced on Mediaset channels only starting in 1991, at which time the network was available to the entire population. Instead, we present evidence that earlier exposure to commercial TV is associated with a substantial decline ...
To what extent are the media to blame for the rise of populist political leaders? Andrea Tesei and colleagues explore the impact of the light entertainment served up by Silvio Berlusconi's commercial TV network, Mediaset, on his later... more
To what extent are the media to blame for the rise of populist political leaders? Andrea Tesei and colleagues explore the impact of the light entertainment served up by Silvio Berlusconi's commercial TV network, Mediaset, on his later electoral success.
Research Interests:
Existing studies of trust formation in U.S. metropolitan areas have found that trust is lower when there is more income inequality and greater racial fragmentation. I add to this literature by examining the role of income inequality... more
Existing studies of trust formation in U.S. metropolitan areas have found that trust is lower when there is more income inequality and greater racial fragmentation. I add to this literature by examining the role of income inequality between racial groups (racial income inequality). I find that greater racial income inequality reduces trust. Also, racial fragmentation is no longer a significant determinant of trust once racial income inequality is accounted for. I also show that racial income inequality has a more detrimental effect in more racially fragmented communities and that trust falls more in minority groups when racial income inequality increases. The results hold under both least squares and instrumental variable estimation.
Research Interests:
We study the political impact of commercial television in Italy exploiting the staggered introduction of Berlusconi's private TV network, Mediaset, in the early 1980s. We find that individuals with early access to Mediaset... more
We study the political impact of commercial television in Italy exploiting the staggered introduction of Berlusconi's private TV network, Mediaset, in the early 1980s. We find that individuals with early access to Mediaset all-entertainment content were more likely to vote for Berlusconi's party in 1994, when he first ran for office. The effect persists for five elections and is driven by heavy TV viewers, namely the very young and the elderly. Regarding possible mechanisms, we find that individuals exposed to entertainment TV as children were less cognitively sophisticated and civic-minded as adults, and ultimately more vulnerable to Berlusconi's populist rhetoric.
Research Interests:
In recent decades, commentators and academics have become increasingly concerned over the decline in both trust and social capital in many communities in the U.S. While research has shown that race and income diversity tends to be... more
In recent decades, commentators and academics have become increasingly concerned over the decline in both trust and social capital in many communities in the U.S. While research has shown that race and income diversity tends to be associated with lower levels of social capital, Andrea Tesei takes a closer look, examining the relationship between trust, income inequality and racial diversity. By studying survey responses on trust from 110 metropolitan areas from 1973 to 2010, he finds that racial income inequality decreases trust within communities, and that this lack of trust is exacerbated when communities are more racially fragmented and as this inequality increases.
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A.1.1. Setup WE CONSIDER a network of individuals characterized by the distribution P(d) (d = 0 1 D) of the number d of neighbors or degree, where ∑D d=0 P(d) = 1. We regard mobile phones as increasing the number of neighbors and, as a... more
A.1.1. Setup WE CONSIDER a network of individuals characterized by the distribution P(d) (d = 0 1 D) of the number d of neighbors or degree, where ∑D d=0 P(d) = 1. We regard mobile phones as increasing the number of neighbors and, as a result, increasing the density of the network. We revert to a more formal definition of network density below. Each agent i has the choice between taking action 0, the status quo (in the present case, not protesting), or action 1 (in the present case, protesting). We denote the utility of an agent of degree di from taking action 1 relative to action 0 when he expects his neighbors to choose action 1 with probability ȳ−i by vi = v(di ȳ−i). We follow others in the literature (e.g., Granovetter (1978), Jackson and Yariv (2007)) and assume that agents’ decisions are characterized by strategic complementarities, that is, that the utility of agent i from taking action 1 is nondecreasing in ȳ−i:
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Existing studies of social capital formation in US metropolitan areas have found that social capital is lower when there is more income inequality and greater racial fragmentation. I add to this literature by examining the role of income... more
Existing studies of social capital formation in US metropolitan areas have found that social capital is lower when there is more income inequality and greater racial fragmentation. I add to this literature by examining the role of income inequality between racial groups (racial income inequality). I find that greater racial income inequality reduces social capital. Also, racial fragmentation is no longer a significant determinant of social capital once racial income inequality is accounted for. This result is consistent with a simple conceptual framework where concurrent differences in race and income are especially detrimental for social capital formation. I find empirical support for further implications deriving from this assumption. In particular, I show that racial income inequality has a more detrimental effect in more racially fragmented communities and that trust falls more in minority groups than in the majority group when racial income inequality increases. ∗PhD Candidate,...
Existing studies of trust formation in U.S. metropolitan areas have found that trust is lower when there is more income inequality and greater racial fragmentation. I add to this literature by examining the role of income inequality... more
Existing studies of trust formation in U.S. metropolitan areas have found that trust is lower when there is more income inequality and greater racial fragmentation. I add to this literature by examining the role of income inequality between racial groups (racial income inequality). I find that greater racial income inequality reduces trust. Also, racial fragmentation is no longer a significant determinant of trust once racial income inequality is accounted for. This result is consistent with a simple conceptual framework where concurrent differences in race and income are especially detrimental for trust formation. I find empirical support for further implications deriving from this assumption. In particular, I show that racial income inequality has a more detrimental effect in more racially fragmented communities and that trust falls more in minority groups than in the majority group when racial income inequality increases.
Research Interests:
We reconsider the relationship between oil and conflict, focusing on the location of oil resources. In a panel of 132 countries over the period 1962-2009, we show that oil windfalls escalate conflict in onshore-rich countries, while they... more
We reconsider the relationship between oil and conflict, focusing on the location of oil resources. In a panel of 132 countries over the period 1962-2009, we show that oil windfalls escalate conflict in onshore-rich countries, while they de-escalate conflict in offshore-rich countries. We use a model to illustrate how these opposite effects can be explained by a fighting capacity mechanism, whereby the government can use offshore oil income to increase its fighting capacity, while onshore oil may be looted by oppositional groups to finance a rebellion. We provide empirical evidence supporting this interpretation: we find that oil price windfalls increase both the number and strength of active rebel groups in onshore-rich countries, while they strengthen the government in offshore-rich ones.
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I present a broad empirical investigation of the relation between economic shocks and institutional changes, testing different theories of political transitions. I focus on shocks induced by changes in the international price of the... more
I present a broad empirical investigation of the relation between economic shocks and institutional changes, testing different theories of political transitions. I focus on shocks induced by changes in the international price of the principal commodity of a country, to obtain exogenous sources of income fluctuation. The sample consists of 72 countries observed during the 1976-2004 period. My results indicate that economic shocks have a significant impact on institutional change in autocratic countries. The effect is not even, but highly heterogeneous: following a 10% income shock, an autocracy at a level of -10 on the Polity scale increases the probability of institutional change of 1%, while an autocracy at a level of -1 increases of a much higher 9.6%. Such heterogeneity in the political response to economic downturns is also confirmed using a dif-ferent classification of autocratic regimes, as in Geddes (2003). Finally, my IV estimates indicate that democracy act as an absorbing ...