Giacomo Magistretti

Giacomo Magistretti is an economist at the International Monetary Fund. His research interests are in macroeconomics and political economy, with an emphasis on fiscal policy with an aging population and on the socio-economic effects of economic integration. He holds a PhD in Economics from Northwestern University.

Economic integration and the transmission of democracy
Dramatic increases in globalisation resulted in autocratic countries being exposed to the institutions and values of their democratic trade partners. Exploiting improvements in air transportation relative to sea shipping that occurred over the last five decades, and combining survey data with country level measures of democracy from 1960 to 2015, Tabellini and Magristretti document that trade with democracies increases both citizens’ support for democracy and countries’ democracy scores, and investigate the feasibility of the mechanisms through which this democratisation occurs.
