Alberto Alesina

Alesina was born in Broni, Lombardy, Italy. He obtained his undergraduate degree in economics from Bocconi University.[2]

From 2003–2006, Alesina served as Chairman of the Department of Economics at Harvard. He was the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy at Harvard. He visited several institutions including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Tel Aviv University, University of Stockholm, The World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In 2006, Alesina participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project.

He published five books and edited many more. His two most recent books were The Future of Europe: Reform or Decline (2006, MIT Press), and Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference (2004, Oxford). He was a co-editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics for eight years and associate editor of many academic journals. He published columns in many leading newspapers around the world. He was a founding contributor of the online economic policy and research journal Voxeu.org and of Lavoce.info.

Alesina's work covered a variety of topics, including:

• Political business cycles
• The political economy of fiscal policy and budget deficits
• The process of European integration
• Stabilization policies in high inflation countries
• Currency unions
• The political economic determinants of re-distributive policies
• Differences in the welfare state in the US and Europe
• Differences in the economic system in the US and Europe
• The effect of alternative electoral systems on economic policies
• The determination of the choice of different electoral systems

Alesina was a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, Massachusetts), the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London, and the Econometric Society.[3] He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006.[4]

Alesina died from a suspected heart attack on 23 May 2020, while hiking with his wife, Susan.[5][6]

Alesina was an influential proponent of austerity during the Great Recession.[2][7] He argued that austerity can be expansionary in situations where government reduction in spending is offset by greater increases in aggregate demand (private consumption, private investment and exports).[8]

In October 2009 Alesina and Silvia Ardagna published "Large Changes in Fiscal Policy: Taxes Versus Spending",[9] a much-cited academic paper aimed at showing that fiscal austerity measures did not hurt economies, and actually helped their recovery. On 6 June 2013 U.S. economist and 2008 Nobel laureate Paul Krugman published "How the Case for Austerity Has Crumbled"[10] in The New York Review of Books, noting how influential these articles have been with policymakers, describing the paper by the 'Bocconi Boys' Alesina and Ardagna (from the name of their Italian alma mater) as "a full frontal assault on the Keynesian proposition that cutting spending in a weak economy produces further weakness", arguing the reverse.

• Harvard Faculty page.
• Alberto Alesina at CSA Celebrity Speakers
• Stock Exchange Of Visions: Visions of Alberto Alesina (Video Interviews)
• Web site of Voxeu.org
• Web site of LaVoce.info
• Alberto Alesina talks about his new book, "The Future of Europe" with Jenny Attiyeh on the interview program ThoughtCast!