This paper evaluates the effects of statistical information on the propensity to favor a specific group of recipients when allocating a scarce public resource. We refer to scarce resource with reference to the COVID-19 emergency: allocation of the first round of vaccine and the allocation of...

When voters’ trust in politicians collapses, they demand simple policies that they can easily monitor. Disenchanted citizens therefore prefer committed delegates to politicians who propose themselves as competent policy makers but without a specific policy commitment (trustees). In a two-party...

We study the consequences of populism for government performance and the quality of bureaucracy. When voters lose trust in representative democracy, populists strategically supply unconditional policy commitments that are easier to monitor for voters. When in power, populists implement their...

Political checks and balances are certainly among the most debated desiderata in the construction of democratic systems and their evaluation. This paper suggests a conceptual framework that could be useful to inform this debate. We propose a model where the pros and cons of a strengthening of...

We evaluate how traditional parties may respond to populist parties on issues aligning with populist messages. During the 2020 Italian referendum on the reduction of members of Parliament, we conducted a large-scale field experiment, exposing 200 municipalities to nearly a million impressions of...

We study the effect of local exposure to populism on net population movements by citizenship status, gender, age and education level in the context of Italian municipalities. We present two research designs to estimate the causal effect of populist attitudes and politics. Initially, we use a...