Alberto Alesina

Alberto Alesina is the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. Previously, Alesina served as Chairman of the Department of Economics from 2003 - 2006. He obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1986.

Alesina is a member of a variety of organizations dealing with Economics. He is a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Center for Economic Policy Research, the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Alesina is a leader in the field of Political Economics and has published extensively in all major academic journals in economics. As well, Alesina is the author of five books He has been a Co-editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics for eight years and Associate Editor of many academic journals.

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.