Research
My main research interests are Experimental and Behavioural Economics, Political Economy, and the Economics of Migration.
My experimental researches have been concerned with how shared beliefs deriving from culture, narratives, political statements, and the media influence economic behaviour.
During my Ph.D., my work in political economy has been to empirically investigate the political impact of the presence of immigrants. Nowadays, my focus has shifted to understanding the origins of populism and how it is changing the political landscape.
In my experimental researches, my focus is on cooperation, coordination, productivity and policy opinions on migration. I usually program experiments with oTree and run them either in the lab or online. For my empirical researches, I increasingly rely on scraping my own data out of the internet and on social media like Twitter and Facebook. Often, this data consists of text from which I extract data with NLP and machine-learning techniques.
WORK IN PROGRESS
Immigrants and populism, with Rama Dasi Mariani, Fabrizio Patriarca. Our first paper from this project, Hate at first sight? Dynamic aspects of the electoral impact of immigrants: the case of Brexit and UK, has been published on The Journal of Population Economics and its companion paper ''What meets the eye: the effect of the presence of immigrants on personal attitudes to migrations in Europe" has been published on the Economics Bulletin. Now we are developing ideas for new research projects.
The political economy of automation and AI, with Giacomo Battiston, Federico Boffa, Alberto Parmigiani, Steven Stillman. Associated to a grant by the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, we are ultimating the experimental design of the survey experiment.
Local identity in media slant: the case of Alto Adige, with Federico Boffa. We acquired the data from Alto Adige and now we look forward to analysing it to prepare a field experiment.
The impact of political parties’ manifestos on perceptions and ideology, with Steven Stillman, Mala Velamuri. We have completed the analysis and we are currently in the process of writing the paper up.
Pro-environmental preferences and voting: is there a perfect correspondance? A machine learning approach, with Enrico De Ecclesiis, Fabrizio Patriarca. We have completed the analysis and we are currently in the process of writing the paper up.
Digital navigation systems and congestion externalities: the case of Waze in Rome, with Federico Boffa, Federico Maggio, Alberto Iozzi and Mariangela Zoli. Within a larger project on congestion externalities, we look here at the impact of digital navigation systems. We are in the process of acquiring the data.
Does participatory democracy increase the efficacy of policies? The case study of Commonplace in London, with Federico Boffa, Steven Stillman, Federico Maggio, Alberto Iozzi and Mariangela Zoli. Within a larger project on congestion externalities, we look here at the impact of participatory democracy and segregation within London. We are in the process of acquiring the data.
Competition and persistent inequality, with David Bruner, Todd Cherry, Abhijit Ramalingam. We have ran the experiment on Prolific, now we are proceeding to running additional sessions in the lab.
Does the source of inequalities affect social capital?, with Ananish Chaudhuri, Abhijit Ramalingam, Sanket Sen. We ran the experiment and we are currently analysing the data and preparing the manuscript.
The interplay between punishment and impefect monitoring on inequalities in cooperation, with Ananish Chaudhuri, Abhijit Ramalingam, Sanket Sen. We are finishing preparing the code for the experiment.