Alberto Alesina is the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. He served as Chairman of the Department of Economics from 2003 – 2006. He is a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Center for Economic Policy Research. He is a member of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the director of the political economy program of the NBER since 2006.

Enrico Spolaore is a Professor of Economics at Tufts University and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), where he is a member of the Political Economy Program. He is also a CESIfo Fellow at the University of Munich and an External Associate at the University of Warwick’s Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).