Portrait of Agapito Emanuele Santangelo

Agapito E. Santangelo

Causal inferencePolicy evaluationDigital data & ML

Agapito E. Santangelo

Applied economist · PhD — University of Molise

I am an applied economist: I evaluate public policies with causal inference, unconventional digital data and machine learning.

Much of my recent work studies how digitalisation transforms the public sector — from EU cohesion funds to municipal digital services — using difference-in-differences designs, panel data and archived web traces. I also work on health, institutions and territorial dynamics.

I also work as a Data Analysis Strategist at Instant Analytics, applying text mining and machine learning to real-time monitoring of socioeconomic phenomena: a useful complement to my academic research, because it shows how these methods behave in practice.

I hold a PhD in Economics from the University of Molise with the Doctor Europaeus distinction, including a visiting period at the Universitat Politècnica de València. I serve as a reviewer for PLOS ONE.

Recent updates

Aug 2026New personal project: Molise by Night — ten years of satellite nighttime lights across the region’s 136 municipalities, with interactive maps and a 2013–2022 comparison. Explore it → →
Jun 2026The 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off — new interactive prediction dashboard built with Instant Analytics: official draw, FIFA rankings and 10,000 Monte Carlo simulations, all running in the browser. Explore it → →
Apr 2026Presented at the CSI/Istat seminar «Raccontare il territorio attraverso la statistica pubblica», University of Valle d’Aosta — paper on the determinants of financial sustainability of Lazio municipalities (with V. Borzetti).

All updates →