The impact of a public voucher for the arts

We provide novel evidence on the impact of a public voucher scheme for cultural consumption. The voucher was introduced in Italy in 2016 for citizens aged 18 years old. We use repeated cross-sections from the annual household survey ‘Aspects of Daily Life’ for the period 2013–2019 and combine Entropy Balancing with Difference-in-Difference estimation to assess the voucher causal effect on cultural consumption. We find a significant impact of the cultural voucher in fostering participation in cinema, non-classic concerts and reading books and online/e-books, with the effect driven by lower SES individuals. Overall, estimated effects suggest a less-than-total crowding out of public resources. The voucher also generated some spillover effects at the household level, and, in the case of cinema, resulted in a sustained higher consumption, even after the financial support terminated.