Dr Matteo Pazzona
Senior Lecturer in Economics

Topics

I am accepting PhD students interested in labor economics, particularly those working on topics involving applied microeconometric techniques, with a focus on causal inference.

PhD projects for research students

• The economics of the private security sector in the UK

Research supervision

Suggested PhD Project: The relationship between politicians’ funding, characteristics, and behavior

Money is necessary to finance the electoral campaigns of politicians who run for public office. It thus plays an important role in many democracies. However, this role of money in the political process has the potential to affect how democratic institutions work, and it could ultimately undermine them. Election outcomes, the composition of elected bodies, and the activities of the elected determine the extent of descriptive and, ultimately, substantive representation of various groups in society. Candidate selection and election campaigns may impact the polarization in society and thus have immediate effects on the democratic discourse. These concerns are particularly relevant and timely considering the recent surge in populism across even established democracies. In the context of these issues and related challenges facing societies today, it is crucial to enhance our understanding of the role money plays in the processes that lead to outcomes with such profound implications.

This PhD project is expected to further enhance and study a newly assembled dataset that brings together detailed micro-data on the characteristics, funding, and behavior of members of the United States Congress. The doctoral researcher is expected to use the existing data, collect data on additional dimensions, and apply various micro-econometric techniques to investigate the role of money in politics by addressing potential questions such as:

• What characteristics do candidates for office have?
• What candidates’ characteristics are associated with successful fundraising?
• Who donates to candidates (e.g., small donors, corporations, special interest groups)?
• Which candidates, with what characteristics, and what composition of funding and spending are successful electorally (i.e., become members of Congress)?
• Does the nature of the race (e.g., the chamber; being an incumbent, challenging an incumbent, or running for an open seat) play any role?
• What variation in characteristics and funding composition exists among members of the United States Congress?
• Is this variation associated with measures of effort (e.g., bill co-sponsorship), behavior (e.g., constituency services, outside activity, lobbying after leaving Congress), or policy leanings (e.g., roll call votes, ideology scores)?

Answers to these questions can help enhance our understanding of the role money plays in the political process. They will help assess which concerns around the role of money in politics should be taken particularly seriously and inform both public and policy debate around potential reforms to tackle them.

Candidates must have strong quantitative skills, including demonstrable experience in econometrics. In addition, they must be (able and willing to quickly become) proficient in collecting data from secondary data sources, web scraping (using Python or another software), and working with and managing large amounts of data and using advanced micro-econometrics methods in Python, R, or STATA.

Supervisors: This Ph.D. project will be jointly supervised by Dr Jan Auerbach and Dr Matteo Pazzona.