Alberto Francesco Alesina (29 April 1957 – 23 May 2020) was an Italian economist who was the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University from 2003 until his death in 2020.[3][4] He was known principally as an economist of politics and culture, and was famed for his usage of economic tools to study social and political issues.[5][6] He was described as having “almost single-handedly” established the modern field of political economy, and as a likely contender for the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.[5][7][8]
From 1986 to 1987, Alesina was a postdoctoral fellow in political economy at Carnegie Mellon University.[3] He joined the faculty of Harvard University in 1987, where he was an assistant professor of economics and government between 1987 and 1993, the Paul Sack Associate Professor of Political Economy from 1991 to 1993, a full professor of economics and government from 1993 to 2003, and the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy from 2003 till his death in 2020.[3] He chaired the Department of Economics at Harvard between 2003 and 2006.[10]
During the Great Recession in Europe, Alesina aroused controversy as an advocate of fiscal austerity.[14][15] 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).[16] A credible fiscal consolidation would reduce private actors' uncertainty and lower the risk premium. Assuming that Ricardian equivalence and the permanent income hypothesis hold, actors' expected future wealth would increase and induce them to consume more.[17] In October 2009, Alesina and Silvia Ardagna published "Large Changes in Fiscal Policy: Taxes Versus Spending",[18] a widely-cited academic paper aimed at showing that fiscal austerity measures did not hurt economies, and actually helped their recovery.
Alesina’s advocacy of austerity was strongly criticised by Nobel laureatePaul Krugman, who published "How the Case for Austerity Has Crumbled" in the New York Review of Books in June 2013, in which he noted the influence of pro-austerity articles authored by Alesina and his supporters, and described the work of the “Bocconi Boys” as "a full frontal assault on the Keynesian proposition that cutting spending in a weak economy produces further weakness".[19]
More recently, studies by the IMF and others have cast doubt on the methodological underpinning of Alesina's work, and conclude that the evidence is more likely to suggest a contractionary effect of fiscal consolidation.[20][21] However, Alesina along with Francesco Giavazzi and Carlo Favero published counterarguments that suggested some austerity programmes (such as the one in Britain) had produced above-average economic growth and stronger economic performance than had been predicted by the IMF, and argued that spending cuts were a more effective way to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio than tax increases.[22]
On 23 May 2020, while hiking with his wife, Susan, Alesina died; the cause was diagnosed as a heart attack.[23] In 2021, Harvard University renamed its Seminar on Political Economy in Alesina's honor.[24]
1997a. Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy (with Nouriel Roubini & Gerald D. Cohen). MIT Press. Description and chapter-preview links.
1997b. Designing Macroeconomic Policy for Europe (with Olivier Blanchardet al.), CEPR, London.
2003. The Size of Nations (with Enrico Spolaore). MIT Press. Description and chapter-preview links.
2004. Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference (with Edward Glaeser). Oxford. Description, and "slide-show" summary, and chapter-preview links via "select" click.
1987. "Macroeconomic Policy in a Two-Party System as a Repeated Game," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 102(3), p pp. 651–678.
1988b. "Macroeconomics and Politics," NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1988, Volume 3, pp. 13–62.
1991. "Why Are Stabilizations Delayed?" (with Allan Drazen), American Economic Review, 81(5), pp. 1170–1188.
1993. "Central Bank Independence and Macroeconomic Performance: Some Comparative Evidence" (with Lawrence H. Summers), Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 25(2), p pp. 151–162.
1994. "Distributive Politics and Economic Growth" (with Dani Rodrik), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 109(2), p pp. 465–490.
1995. "The Political Economy of Budget Deficits" (with Roberto Perotti), IMF Staff Papers, 42(1), pp. pp. 1–31.
1996a. "Political Instability and Economic Growth" (with Sule Özler et al.), Journal of Economic Growth, 1(2), p pp. 189–211
1996b. "Income Distribution, Political Instability, and Investment," (with Roberto Perotti), European Economic Review, 40(6), pp. 1203–1228. Abstract.
1997. "On the Number and Size of Nations" (with Enrico Spolaore), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112(4), p pp. 1027–1056.
2000a. "Who Gives Foreign Aid to Whom and Why?" (with David Dollar), Journal of Economic Growth, 5(1), p pp. 33–63.
2000b. "Participation in Heterogeneous Communities" (with Eliana La Ferrara), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(3), p pp. 847–904.
2002a. "Who Trusts Others?" Journal of Public Economics, 85(2), pp. 207–234 (close Pages tab).
2002b. "Fiscal Policy, Profits, and Investment" (with Silvia Ardagna et al.), American Economic Review, 92(3), pp. 571–589.Archived 7 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine
2003. "Fractionalization" (with Arnaud Devleeschauwer et al.), Journal of Economic Growth, 8(2), p pp. 155–194.
2004. "Inequality and Happiness: Are Europeans and Americans Different?" (with Rafael Di Tellab and Robert MacCulloch), Journal of Public Economics, 88(9–10), pp. 2009–2042 (close Bookmarks tab).
2005a. "International Unions" (with Ignazio Angeloni and Federico Etro), American Economic Review, 95(3), p pp. 602–615.
2005b. "Ethnic Diversity and Economic Performance" (with Eliana La Ferrara), Journal of Economic Literature, 43(3), pp. 762–800.
2007:3. "Political Economy," NBER Reporter, pp. 1–5 (press +).
2010. "Large Changes in Fiscal Policy: Taxes versus Spending" (with Silvia Ardagna), in J. R. Brown, ed., Tax Policy and the Economy, v. 24, ch. 2, pp. 35–68. doi:10.1086/649828
2013. "On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough" (with Paola Giuliano and Nathan Nunn), Quarterly Journal of Economics. 2013; 128 (2) : 469–530.
2015. "The Output Effect of Fiscal Consolidations" (with Carlo Favero and Francesco Giavazzi), Journal of International Economics, vol 96, pages S19-S42. doi:10.1016/j.jinteco.2014.11.003
^"Memoriam". The Econometric Society. Retrieved 14 January 2024.
^"Alberto Alesina". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. July 2023. Retrieved 8 March 2024.
^Helgadóttir, Oddný (15 March 2016). "The Bocconi boys go to Brussels: Italian economic ideas, professional networks and European austerity". Journal of European Public Policy. 23 (3): 392–409. doi:10.1080/13501763.2015.1106573. ISSN1350-1763. S2CID155917559.
^Alesina, Alberto; Favero, Carlo; Giavazzi, Francesco (2019). Austerity: When It Works and When It Doesn't. Princeton University Press. p. 5. ISBN978-0-691-17221-7. JSTORj.ctvc77f4b.
^Carlin, Wendy; Soskice, David (2014). Macroeconomics:Institutions, instability, and the financial system. USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 528–530.
^Alesina, Alberto F.; Ardagna, Silvia (October 2009). "Large Changes in Fiscal Policy: Taxes Versus Spending". NBER Working Paper No. 15438. CiteSeerX10.1.1.362.7482. doi:10.3386/w15438.