Short biography
I was born in Lecce (Italy), then off to Milan where I met Paola and got my laurea at Bocconi. I worked at the Fondazione Rodolfo Debenedetti, with Tito Boeri. PhD from the University College London, with Richard Blundell. Paola and I got married in Hackney, London, on May 4, 2006. In July 2006 I joined Stanford. I visited UC-Berkeley in 2010-11, held the Wesley Mitchell visiting professor chair at Columbia in 2012-13, and visited the NY-Fed. In June 2013, Paola and I moved to Barcelona. I joined the Barcelona-wide research community as a Research Professor at ICREA-MOVE, Barcelona GSE and UAB. I am working on: Climate and development; Risk sharing; Business literacy and formalization; Indirect and general equilibrium effects of aid policies; Demand estimation; Social interactions; Consumption inequality. My work has appeared in the American Economic Review, the AEJ Applied, the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of the European Economic Association, among others. Research interests
My research focuses on development economics, social interactions, education and consumption inequality. Poor households face substantial risk, and in the absence of formal markets, informal insurance is crucial for households' survival and central to policies. We study how risk is shared within small villages (AER 2009). In related projects (as in the JPubE 2009) we investigate the effects of family networks on investment in human and physical capital. Should anti-poverty transfers be in-kind or cash? Paternalistic and self-targeting motives would favor in-kind transfers, while cash transfers have lower costs and give greater flexibility. Somewhat neglected is the effect on local prices of in-kind and cash transfers. Using the random variation from the Programa de Apoyo Alimentario in Mexico, we find substantial price effects in remote villages where most of the very poor live. In field experiments, we analyze why small businesses are unable to generate steady revenues and profits.
Key words
Development, Social Interactions, Education