@article{Fernández:319182,
      recid = {319182},
      author = {Fernández, Raquel and Parsa, Sahar and Viarengo, Martina},
      title = {Coming out in America AIDS, politics, and cultural change},
      publisher = {Centre for Economic Policy Research},
      address = {London. 2019},
      number = {BOOK},
      series = {CEPR Discussion Paper ; 13749},
      pages = {63 pages : illustrations},
      year = {2019},
      abstract = {The last few decades witnessed a dramatic change in public  opinion towards gay people. This paper studies the  hypothesis that the AIDS epidemic was a shock that changed  the incentive to "come out" and that the ensuing process of  mobilization and endogenous political process led to  cultural transformation. We show that the process of change  was discontinuous over time and present suggestive evidence  that the 1992 presidential election followed by the "don't  ask, don't tell" debate led to a change in attitudes. Using  a difference-in-difference empirical strategy, we find  that, in accordance with our hypothesis, the change in  opinion was greater in states with higher AIDS rates. Our  analysis suggests that if individuals in low-AIDS states  had experienced the same average AIDS rate as a high-AIDS  state, the change in their approval rate from the '70s to  the '90s would have been 50 percent greater.},
      url = {http://repository.graduateinstitute.ch/record/319182},
}