Biography

My research interests include theoretical and quantitative macroeconomics, particularly business cycles, inequality and optimal fiscal policy.  My Ph.D. thesis focuses on the sources of aggregate fluctuations, on their relationship with income inequality and individual risk, and on optimal fiscal policy.
My current research investigates whether and to what extent changes in the composition of labour affect aggregate production. Moreover, I explore whether or not these can account for the changes in aggregate fluctuations and income inequality that have been observed over the past four decades.

Jointly with Martin Gervais, I look at the optimal government spending, taxes and government debt, in a business cycle model with productive government infrastructures.  We show that, if the production of government infrastructures is subject to less volatile shocks than private production, then a negative productivity shock calls for an immediate increase in government spending on infrastructures mainly financed by government debt.

In my other study I measure the effects of aggregate productivity shocks in a variation of the neoclassical growth model where, in order to better predict the observed saving rate, I allow for curvature in the transformation frontier between durables and non-durables. With respect to the original framework, this model implies a larger role of productivity shocks for the business cycle.

I expect to complete my Ph.D. at the University of Southampton by summer 2009. Whilst studying for my Ph.D. I spent 15 months at the University of Pennsylvania. I am also a doctoral student at the University of Rome "La Sapienza".