Alberto Alesina

Biography

Alberto Alesina, born in Italy in 1957, is the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of
Political Economy at Harvard University. He served as Chairman of the Department of
Economics from 2003 - 2006. He obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1986. He is also a
member of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Center for Economic
Policy Research. He is a member of the Econometric Society and of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a leader in the field of Political Economics and has
published extensively in all major academic journals in economics. He has published
five books and edited many more. His two most recent books are The Future of Europe:
Reform or Decline, published by MIT Press, and Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe:
A World of Difference, published by Oxford University Press. He has been a Co-editor of
the Quarterly Journal of Economics for eight years and Associate Editor of many
academic journals. He has published columns in many leading newspapers around the
world and has visited several institutions including MIT, Tel Aviv University, University
of Stockholm, The World Bank, and the IMF.
His work has covered a variety of topics: political business cycles, the political
economy of fiscal policy and budget deficits, the process of European integration,
stabilization policies in high inflation countries, the determination of the size of countries,
currency unions, the political economic determinants of redistributive policies,
differences in the welfare state in the US and Europe and, more generally, differences
in the economic system in the US and Europe, the effect of alternative electoral systems
on economic policies, and the determination of the choice of different electoral systems.