This paper analyzes the interaction between intergenerational wealth transmission, human capital investments under uninsurable labor income risk, and economic growth in a small open overlapping-generations economy with heterogeneous agents. It demonstrates how the role of the personal income...

We investigate the long term determinants of political and economic outcomes over a new data set composed of Mississippi counties. We analyze the effect of disfranchisement on voting registration at the end of the nineteenth century (1896-9), as well as the impact of voting registration on...

We investigate the long term determinants of political and economic outcomes over a new data set composed of Mississippi counties. We analyze the effect of disfranchisement on voting registration at the end of the nineteenth century (1896-9), as well as the impact of voting registration on...

This paper offers an overview of Alberto Alesina's life and of his scholarly work (§ 1 and 2). It will be argued, that Alberto would have entirely deserved the award of the Nobel Prize for Economic Science, except only for his premature passing away. His foundational contribution was the...

A model of endogenous growth is presented, based on productive public expenditures, and featuring some degree of income inequality, and polarization in policy preferences. The main innovation lays in the political process determining capital taxation that relies, both on voting and on "influence...

This paper analyzes the distributive impacts of violent conflicts, which is in contrast to previous literature that has focused on the other direction. We use cross-country panel data for the time period 1960-2005 to estimate war-related changes in income inequality. Our results indicate rising...