Jonathan Elkobi

Jonathan Elkobi Yonathan Elkobi

PhD Student in Political Science

Yale University

Greetings,

I am a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at Yale and hold an MSc in Computer Science from Yale University. I received my Master’s in Chinese Economics and Political Affairs from the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego, and my BA in Business Administration and China Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Beginning in 2026, I will be the Peter Salovey and Marta Moret Data Science Fellow at Yale University (2026-2028).

My research focuses on elite politics and elite speech, local governments, and politics and financial markets. Methodologically, I develop computational social science tools, especially text-as-data approaches using large language models and natural language processing, to measure political elite behavior and political speech. A central part of my research agenda examines municipal bond markets in the United States and China. I also work on projects about local-government economic outcomes, including pollution and growth, and how Central-Local Government Relations effect them. I alos have strong interest in how prediction markets affect politics.

Interests
  • Political Economy
  • Local Politics and Central-Local Government Relations
  • Elite Politics and Political Communication
  • Computational Social Science
Education
  • PhD in Political Science, 2024-2030 (expected)

    Yale University

  • MSc in Computer Science, 2024-2026

    Yale University

  • Master in Chinese Economics and Political Affairs, 2022-2024

    School of Global Policy and Strategy, UC San Diego

  • BA in Business Administration and China Studies, 2019-2022

    The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Research Agenda

How political elites, local governments, and financial markets shape one another.

Political Economy

Municipal finance and fiscal constraint

I study how local debt, fiscal autonomy, and partisan signals shape municipal bond markets and local economic outcomes in the United States and China.

Elite Politics

Speech, ideology, and influence

My projects measure how political elites communicate, how ideology structures elite behavior, and how online platforms can reshape public perceptions.

Methods

Computational social science

I build text-as-data workflows using NLP, large language models, causal inference, and scalable data pipelines for political science research.

Selected Working Papers

Current projects from my CV.