Seminar – Internet & Politics: Evidence from UK Local Elections & Local Government Policies

Tommaso Valletti, Chief Competition Economist at the Directorate General for Competition, European Commission, and Professor of Economics at Imperial College Business School

We empirically study the effects of broadband internet diffusion on local election outcomes and on local government policies using rich data from the UK. Our analysis suggests that the Internet has displaced other media with greater news content (i.e. radio and newspapers), thereby decreasing voter turnout, most notably among less-educated and younger individuals. In turn, we find suggestive evidence that local government expenditures and taxes are lower in areas with greater broadband diffusion, particularly expenditures targeted at less-educated voters. Our findings are consistent with the idea that voters’ information plays a key role in determining electoral participation, government policies and government size.

Speaker bio

Tommaso Valletti has a magna cum laude degree in engineering from Turin and holds a MSc and a PhD in economics from the London School of Economics. He is Professor of Economics at Imperial College Business School, and also Professor of Economics at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” (Italy). He has previously taught at the London School of Economics, Telecom ParisTech/Ecole Polytechnique, and Turin.

Tommaso is the Director of the PhD programme at Imperial College Business School. He is currently on leave, as he has been appointed Chief Competition Economist of the European Commission (Directorate General for Competition) as of September 2016.

Tommaso’s main research interests are in industrial economics, regulation, and telecommunications economics. Tommaso has held several editorial positions (Editor of Information Economics & Policy, Associate Editor of the Journal of Industrial Economics and of Economica). He has published numerous articles in journals such as the American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Information Systems Research, Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Industrial Economics, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Marketing Science, and RAND Journal of Economics.

He is a Fellow of CEPR and of ENCORE. He is a member of the panel of academic advisors to Ofcom, the UK communications regulator. He was also a member of the panel of academic advisors of the UK Competition Commission. Tommaso was Academic Director of the Centre for Regulation in Europe in Brussels, in 2012-2016. He was a board director of Consip, the Italian Public Procurement Agency, in 2002-2005. He has advised numerous bodies, including the European Commission, OECD, and the World Bank on topics such as network interconnection, mobile telephony markets, and spectrum auctions.