Does the information provided by mass media have the power to persistently affect
individual beliefs about the drivers of success in life? To answer this question empirically,
this contribution exploits a natural experiment on the reception of West German television
in the former German Democratic Republic. After identifying the impact of Western television
on individual beliefs and attitudes in the late 1980s, longitudinal data from the German
Socio-Economic Panel is used to test the persistence of the television effect on individual
beliefs during the 1990s. The empirical findings indicate that Western television exposure
has made East Germans more inclined to believe that effort rather than luck determines success
in life. Furthermore, this effect still persists several years after the German reunification.
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