Alberto Alesina

About

Alberto Alesina was the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. He was a leader in the field of Political Economics and published extensively in all major academic journals in economics. He authored five books and edited many more, with his two most recent books being 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. Alesina served as a co-editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics for eight years and was an associate editor of many academic journals. Born in Italy in 1957, he obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1986 and served as Chairman of the Department of Economics from 2003 to 2006. He was a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Center for Economic Policy Research, the Econometric Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His work covered a variety of topics including political business cycles, fiscal policy, European integration, stabilization policies, currency unions, redistributive policies, welfare state differences between the US and Europe, electoral systems, and the economic systems of the US and Europe. He published columns in many leading newspapers and visited several institutions such as MIT, Tel Aviv University, the University of Stockholm, the World Bank, and the IMF.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Economics
• Political economy
• Computer Security
• Law
• Development economics
• Demography
• Economic growth
• Market economy

Selected publications

• Intergenerational Mobility in Africa

  Econometrica · 2021 · 164 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  We examine intergenerational mobility (IM) in educational attainment in Africa since independence using census data. First, we map IM across 27 countries and more than 2,800 regions, documenting wide cross-country and especially within-country heterogeneity. Inertia looms large as differences in the literacy of the old generation explain about half of the observed spatial disparities in IM. The rural-urban divide is substantial. Though conspicuous in some countries, there is no evidence of syste…

  DOI

• Nation-Building and Education

  The Economic Journal · 2021 · 105 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Democracies and dictatorships have different incentives when it comes to choosing how much and by what means to homogenise the population, i.e., ‘to build a nation’. We study and compare nation-building policies under the transition from dictatorship to democracy in a model where the type of government and borders of the country are endogenous. We find that the threat of democratisation provides the strongest incentive to homogenise. We focus upon a specific nation-building policy: mass…

  PublisherDOI

• The Political Effects of Immigration: Culture or Economics?

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2022-05-01 · 66 citations

  preprintOpen access1st author

  We review the growing literature on the political economy of immigration. First, we discuss the effects of immigration on a wide range of political and social outcomes. The existing evidence suggests that immigrants often, but not always, trigger backlash, increasing support for antiimmigrant parties and lowering preferences for redistribution and diversity among natives. Next, we unpack the channels behind the political effects of immigration, distinguishing between economic and non-economic fo…

  PublisherDOI

• Nation-building, nationalism, and $$\hbox {wars}^*$$

  Journal of Economic Growth · 2020 · 65 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Perceptions of Racial Gaps, their Causes, and Ways to Reduce Them

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2021-09-01 · 51 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Using new large-scale survey and experimental data, we investigate how respondents perceive racial inequities between Black and white Americans, what they believe causes them, and what interventions, if any, they think should be implemented to reduce them. We intentionally oversample Black respondents, cover many US cities, and survey both adults and young people of ages 13 through 17. In the experimental parts, we consider the causal impact of information on racial inequities (such as the evolu…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Paola Giuliano

  263 shared

• Francesco Giavazzi

  238 shared

• Guido Tabellini

  Bocconi University

  192 shared

• Carlo A. Favero

  Centre for Economic Policy Research

  184 shared

• Francesco Trebbi

  147 shared

• Roberto Perotti

  143 shared

• Philippe Aghion

  Collège de France

  119 shared

• Silvia Ardagna

  82 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  Harvard University

  1985

• B.A., Economics

  University of Rome 'La Sapienza'

  1980

Awards & honors

• Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Member of the Econometric Society

Similar researchers at Harvard University

• Andrei Shleiferh-200
• John Y. Campbellh-132
• Kenneth Rogoffh-127