A beam of light: Media, tourism and economic development *

Tourism accounts for around one tenth of global GDP. We analyze the impact of entertainment media in drawing tourists to filming municipalities ( media multiplier ) and, in turn, the effect of tourism on local economic development ( tourism multiplier ). To quantify the media multiplier , we employ a triple-difference empirical strategy exploiting the staggered international release across the EU of Inspector Montalbano, a TV series set in four municipalities of Sicily, a region of Italy. We find that the series release led to a fourfold increase in the number of tourists and boosted tourist expenditure by a factor of 2.5. Furthermore, we provide evidence of positive spillovers in nearby municipalities. To estimate the tourism multiplier , we exploit the interaction between the filming locations and the time-varying share of countries in which the series was aired, to instrument total tourist expenditure at the municipality-time level. Our results show that a 10% increase in total tourist expenditure translates into an increase in municipal income of 4.7%. We also document the impact of tourism on urban dynamics. Namely, tourism increases (decreases) rental and selling prices in the more (less) tourist-attractive areas within municipalities. All in all, the paper suggests that both entertainment media and tourism can be effective tools to boost local economic development.