Hi, I’m Lorenzo Maria Casale, a 4th year PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of Zurich and UBS Center for Economics in Society scholarship holder. Welcome to my website!

Born and raised in Rome, I hold my Bachelor and Master in Economics from Tor Vergata University. I joined the PhD program in 2022 after a pre-doc with Prof. Hans-Joachim Voth and Prof. Bruno Caprettini.

My research sits at the intersection of political economy and cultural economics, investigating how identity signals and expressive behavior shape political and economic outcomes. I combine causal inference with machine learning methods to study social coordination.

Current projects examine: kinship networks in Italian politics and cultural expression in American high schools.