Sergio Galletta

Sergio Galletta

Associate Professor of Public Economics
Sapienza University of Rome

I study public economics and political economy, with a focus on corruption, political selection, media, direct democracy, and fiscal policy in developed and developing countries.

My empirical work combines applied microeconomics and machine learning. I am also interested in how artificial intelligence shapes policy-making and democracy.

Curriculum vitae PDF

Selected
working papers

  1. BallotBot: Can AI Chatbots Lower Voter-Information Barriers?
    With E. Ash and G. Opocher · Revise & Resubmit at The Economic Journal
  2. Hey, Governors, Leave Them Kids Alone: Political Influence During Childhood
    With G. Daniele, M. Le Moglie and F. Masera
  3. The Joe Rogan Effect: Politicized Podcasts and the Youth Gender Voting Gap
    With E. Ash, F. Masera and L. Zhang
  4. GLP-1 Treatment and Work Capacity
    With M. Di Buono
  5. War Violence Exposure and Tax Compliance
    With T. Giommoni

Selected
publications

  1. Media Slant is Contagious
    P. Widmer, C. Abed Meraim, S. Galletta and E. Ash · (Conditionally accepted) · The Economic Journal
  2. A Machine Learning Approach to Analyze and Support Anti-Corruption Policy
    E. Ash, S. Galletta and T. Giommoni · 2025 · American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
  3. From Viewers to Voters: Tracing Fox News’ Impact on American Democracy
    E. Ash, S. Galletta, M. Pinna and C. Warshaw · 2024 · Journal of Public Economics
  4. Fighting Violence Against Women: The Role of Female Political Representation
    A. Bochenkova, P. Buonanno and S. Galletta · 2023 · Journal of Development Economics
  5. How Cable News Reshaped Local Government
    E. Ash and S. Galletta · 2023 · American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
  6. The Effect of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic on Income Inequality: Evidence from Italy
    S. Galletta and T. Giommoni · 2022 · Review of Economics and Statistics
  7. Abandon Ship? Party Brands and Politicians’ Responses to a Political Scandal
    G. Daniele, S. Galletta and B. Geys · 2020 · Journal of Public Economics
  8. Popularity shocks and political selection
    F. Cavalcanti, G. Daniele and S. Galletta · 2018 · Journal of Public Economics
  9. Law enforcement, municipal budgets and spill-over effects: Evidence from a quasi-experiment in Italy
    S. Galletta · 2017 · Journal of Urban Economics

Other
publications

  1. Sleeping with the Enemy? How Constituents Constrain Politicians’ Behavior Towards Interest Groups
    M. Espinosa, S. Galletta, A. Ilango and G. Zanarone · (Accepted) · Journal of Law, Economics and Organization
  2. Fiscal Policy Divergence
    P. Bello, S. Galletta and C. Marconi · 2026 · International Tax and Public Finance
  3. Supporting Student Mental Health With the Safespace Generative AI Chatbot: Mixed Methods Feasibility Study
    M. Pinna, S. Galletta, E. Ash and T. Elmer · 2026 · JMIR Formative Research
  4. A large language model-based approach to quantifying the effects of social determinants in liver transplant decisions
    E. Robitschek, A. Bastani, K. Horwath, S. Sordean, M.J. Pletcher, J.C. Lai, S. Galletta, E. Ash, J. Ge and I.Y. Chen · 2025 · npj Digital Medicine
  5. The Role of Civic Capital on Vaccination
    P. Buonanno, S. Galletta and M. Puca · 2023 · Health Economics
  6. The Effect of Fox News on Health Behavior During Covid-19
    E. Ash, S. Galletta, D. Hangartner, Y. Margalit and M. Pinna · 2023 · Political Analysis
  7. Measuring Judicial Sentiment: Methods and Application to U.S. Circuit Courts
    E. Ash, D. Chen and S. Galletta · 2022 · Economica
  8. Form of Government and Voters’ Preferences for Public Spending
    S. Galletta · 2021 · Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
  9. Direct Democracy, Partial Decentralization and Voter Information: Evidence from Swiss Municipalities
    S. Galletta · 2020 · International Tax and Public Finance
  10. Estimating the Severity of COVID-19: Evidence From the Italian Epicenter
    P. Buonanno, S. Galletta and M. Puca · 2020 · PLOS One
  11. Corporate Flat Tax Reforms and Businesses’ Investment Decisions: Evidence from Switzerland
    S. Galletta and A. Redonda · 2017 · International Tax and Public Finance
  12. On the determinants of happiness: a Classification And Regression Tree (CART) approach
    S. Galletta · 2016 · Applied Economics Letters
  13. How to Tame Two Leviathans? Revisiting the effect of direct democracy on local public expenditure in a federation
    S. Galletta and M. Jametti · 2015 · European Journal of Political Economy
  14. Highway to Economic growth? Competition in public works tenders in the Democratic Republic of Congo
    S. Galletta, M. Jametti and A. Redonda · 2015 · South African Journal of Economics

Other
working papers

  1. Demand for Conversational AI
    With E. Ash and F. Capozza
  2. The Partisan Divergence in U.S. Local Policy, 1972–2017
    With E. Ash
  3. Electoral Accountability in Words and Actions: Evidence from the Direct Election of U.S. Senators
    With A. Amati
  4. Media Bias and Climate Change Skepticism
    With E. Ash, A. Boltachka and M. Pinna

Work in progress

  • Consequences of AI-Driven Chatbots in Economic Domain
  • AI Guidance and Educational Decision Making, with E. Ash, A. Bjerre-Nielsen and B. Kohler
  • Visual Justice: The Effect of Media Mugshots on Attitudes and Judicial Outcomes, with E. Ash, B. Kohler and C. Marangon
  • Daughter Penalty or Daughter Benefit? The Effect of Child Gender on Parental Mental Health, with M. Di Buono
  • Taxing Cross-border Commuters, with E. Di Carlo and E. Rubolino
  • Beneath the Surface: Investigating Anti-Competitive Signals in Brazilian Public Procurement, with D. Gianicolo-Martins and T. Giommoni