Valuing Public Goods in a Populist World: A Comparative Analysis of Network Dynamics and Societal Outcomes (VALPOP)

The project takes a unique approach, starting from the question of how populist politics influence networks of societal actors in media, business, and politics, and then moving to how such networks constrain and support the creation and distribution of public goods. These public goods include the rule of law, education, physical and digital infrastructure, health care, and social services. At the heart of this interdisciplinary research endeavour is the cooperation between economists and data scientists, spread over multiple institutions including the University of Innsbruck, the Vienna University of Economics and Business, and the University of Graz. 

We will first engage in an ambitious data collection effort lead by the team at the University of Graz to compile a variety of data sets that capture social networks in media, business, and politics. Based on this data, we will identify societal actors such as politicians, corporations and media outlets and map their relationships. Here, we use the latest methods from machine learning and natural language processing to extract information in an automated way. Building on this data, our collaborators will link the characteristics of the extracted networks to public goods and investigate the value that society allocates to them. 

Based on our findings, we will produce research papers and provide policy briefs for decision-makers in the European Union and worldwide. Flanking the research and policy outputs, the VALPOP project will have extensive community, policy engagement activities, and research conferences, bringing together leading researchers, policymakers, NGOs, and other stakeholders from around Europe and the rest of the world.