Important Questions and Out-of-the-Ordinary Answers: ALBERTO ALESINA 1957-2020.

• Author: De Rugy, Veronique
• Position: IN MEMORIAM

In his 2019 book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, journalise David Epstein explains how, contrary to common belief, a person can excel and leave a mark on the world without narrow specialization. In fact, data show that people who are better positioned to succeed, revolutionize, or dominate in their field are often not the highly specialized experts, but those with wide-ranging interests and an ability to think in adaptable ways. The athlete--think Bo Jackson or Pat Mahomes--who tried all sorts of sports before settling on one is more likely to excel than the one who specialized in one sport early, thanks to an ability to leverage skills and movements from other sports. Likewise, a non-expert crashing a highly specialized meeting could very well be the key to figuring out the solution to a problem that eludes the experts in the room. And an economist with wide-ranging interests, including some outside of economics, is more likely to create a new field based on the blending of disciplines than those who simply stay in their lanes.

One such economist was Alberto Alesina, an incredibly creative and innovative thinker and one of the pioneers in the field of modern political economy. Alesina was the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. He died unexpectedly in late May while on a walk with his wife Susan. What makes his death all the more tragic, in addition to the all-too-soon departure of a 63-year-old man renowned for his love of extreme adventures, is that he was a rare interdisciplinary thinker. He had a penchant for asking important questions and finding out-of-the-ordinary answers. In addition, he was able to do highly technical economics. Alesina was respected by the policy wonks, the out-of-the-box thinkers, and the technical economists, which is quite an accomplishment.

When austerity works /1 first learned of Alesina from his work on fiscal austerity. In a paper written just before the 2007-2009 crisis, he and Goldman Sachs economist Silvia Ardagna (then at Harvard) showed that fiscal adjustment packages based on expenditure cuts by government are more effective at reducing the public-debt-to-GDP ratio than are packages based on tax increases. Their paper also shows that expenditure cuts are not just conducive to long-term growth, but, under the right circumstances, generate growth in the short term. Finally, if cuts in spending triggered some initial contraction of the economy, it...