pre-reunification exposure persist a decade later. She finds that they do: respondents
from districts that did not receive West German programs are 3–5 percentage points
more likely to believe that success in life is a matter of luck.
These findings suggest that Western TV programs vehicled important messages on the
relationship between effort and success in life and had a long-lasting effect on the corre-
sponding beliefs of East Germans. Given that beliefs about the determinants of success in
life are also correlated with voters’ preferences for redistribution (e.g.,
Alesina and La
Ferrara, 2002; Fong, 2001
), these findings can have important policy implications: media
exposure may affect redistributive preferences and other policy outcomes even ...