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Alberto Alesina

Alberto Alesina

Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University.

Alberto Alesina is the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University, where he served as Chairman of the Department of Economics from 2003-2006. He is also a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Center for Economic Policy Research.

Professor Alesina’s work has covered a variety of topics: political business cycles, the political economy of fiscal policy and budget deficits, the process of European integration, stabilisation policies in high inflation 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.

Alberto Alesina has published extensively in all major academic journals in economics, and has written or edited several books. 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 co-editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics for eight years. Professor Alesina is a member of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1986.

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