Lunch Seminar in presence

Building BL26/B – Room 0.19 (ground floor)
Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering
Via R. Lambruschini, 4/B

Antonio Russo
University of Sheffield, UK

Abstract:

We study the provision of information by local governments that supports individual compliance with nationwide regulation, and how this provision relates to the electoral process. We study this question using information about individual mobility (compliance with the lockdown) and Facebook posts by Italian local governments during the Covid 19 pandemic. We show that in municipalities where mayors were up for re-election, local governments provided significantly more covid-related information. This information caused a significant decrease in mobility and excess mortality. However, these effects seem to arise only in the northern regions of the country, where the impact of the pandemic was more severe.

Antonio Russo holds a PhD in Economics from the Toulouse School of Economics. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Sheffield, UK, and Research Associate at CESifo, Germany. His research interests focus on the economics of infrastructure, digital platforms, and online advertising. His research is published in international journals including RAND Journal of Economics, International Economic Review, Marketing Science, Management Science, Journal of Urban Economics and Journal of Economic Geography.

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