Bio

I was born in Orvieto (Italy) where I spent my first eighteen years. 

After graduating at University of Siena in 2002, I got a Master of Sciences (MSc) in Economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona) in 2004 and a PhD in Economics from University of Bologna in 2006. I was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2010 and 2012-2013 . I was the economic advisor to the Ministry of sustainable infrastructures and mobility in 2021-2022.

I am the head of the Law and Economics Division (Economics, Statistics and Research Department of the Bank of Italy).

I am mainly interested in applied, labour, public and urban economics, corporate governance and law and economics.

I have co-organized the workshop on Urban development, agglomeration economies and aggregate growth, the workshop on The Economics of occupational licensing, the conference on Ownership, Governance, Management & Firm Performance and the workshop on Measuring and evaluating public administration efficiency. I was the project manager of Moveo - a stakeholder engagement process ended with the release of a strategic document on trasports and logistics - during my experience at the Ministry of sustainable infrastructures and mobility.

I got the best paper award by SIEP (Italian Society of Public Finance) in 2007, the "Ezio Tarantelli" award by AIEL (Italian Association of Labour Economics) in 2009, a special mention at the international conference in memoriam of "Maria Concetta Chiuri" in 2010. In 2022 I was awarded the title of Cavaliere della Repubblica (order of merit of the Italian Republic)

My research has been published in top journals as American Economic Review and Review of Economic Studies and top field journals as Economic Policy, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Urban Economics and Review of Financial Studies. My article on voxeu is one of the most read of all time. I am in the top 5% authors considering the last 10 years publications in Ideas. 

For more details see my curriculum vitae.

I am married to Angela and father of two amazing kids, Bianca and Diego.