It is well known that, for space dimension n > 3, one cannot generally expect L 1 -L p estimates for the solution ofwhere (t, x) ∈ R + × R n . In this paper, we investigate the benefits in the range of 1 ≤ p ≤ q such that L p -L q estimates hold under the assumption of radial initial data. In the particular case of odd space dimension, we prove L 1 -L q estimates for 1 ≤ q < 2n n−1 and apply these estimates to study the global existence of small data solutions to the semilinear wave equation with power nonlinearity |u| σ , σ > σ c (n), where the critical exponent σ c (n) is the Strauss index.Keywords Wave equation · L 1 estimates · Asymptotic behavior of solutions · Critical exponent · Global existence of small data solutions Mathematics Subject Classification 35L05 (primary) · 35B33 · 35B40 · 74G25 M. R. Ebert and T. Picon are partially supported by São Paulo Research Fundation (Fapesp) Grants 2013/20297-8 and 2013/17636-5, respectively.