Alberto Alesina, a pioneer of modern political economy, dies at 63
Alberto Alesina, one of the world’s most influential economists who applied economic analysis to thorny social and political problems and helped found the field of modern political economy, died Saturday at age 63 of an apparent heart attack while hiking with his wife, Susan. He taught at Harvard for more than three decades. Alesina, Ph.D. ’86, was the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy and a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Alesina had directed the bureau’s Political Economic Program since its creation in 2006. According to Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the Kennedy School of Government, Alesina almost single-handedly established the interdisciplinary field, which has become a vital tool in public policy across a range of issues. Trained as a macroeconomist, Alesina believed in expanding the frontiers of economics into the spheres of political science and sociology. He was a trailblazer in the...