Luigi Pistaferri (born 1968) is an Italian-American economist ^[1]and the Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Economics at Stanford University.^[2] He is known for his research in labor and macroeconomics, focusing on family consumption, labor supply, welfare reform, and inequality. ^[3][4]He is also a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), and a faculty affiliate at the Stanford Center on Longevity. ^[5]He is the co-Director or GRID (Global Repository of Income Dynamics). ^[6]During the period 2012-17 he served as a co-editor of the American Economic Review^[7]; he is currently one of the co-editors of the Journal of Political Economy.^[8] He is the author (with frequent collaborator Tullio Jappelli) of the book The Economics of Consumption: Theory and Evidence.^[9]

Pistaferri was born in Naples, Italy, in 1968. ^[10]He earned his undergraduate degree in International Trade and Foreign Exchange Markets from the Istituto Universitario Navale (IUN, now Parthenope University) in 1993.^[11] He then completed a Master's in Economics at Bocconi University in Milan in 1995.^[12] Pistaferri went on to earn his Ph.D. in Economics from University College London in 1999 and later obtained a Doctorate in Economic Sciences from IUN in 2001.

Pistaferri joined Stanford University in 1999 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics.^[13] He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2006 and to full Professor in 2011. ^[11]Since 2013, he has held the position of Ralph Landau Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR).^[5] Pistaferri has also held several visiting academic positions, including a Bajola Parisani Visiting Chair in Economics and Institutions at the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance in Rome during 2011-2012^[14], a "Franco Modigliani" Visiting Professorship at the University of Naples "Federico II" in 2018-19, and a University of Chicago Griffin Economics Incubator Distinguished Visitor position in 2024-25.^[5]

Before joining Stanford, Pistaferri worked as a research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London from 1998 to 1999.^[4]

Pistaferri is one of the co-authors of a paper that found a significant relationship between income inequality and consumption inequality over the past two decades.^[15] His work often incorporates large-scale datasets and quantitative methods to analyze families' and individuals' behavior in response to economic policy changes.^[16]

• Elected Fellow of the Society of Labor Economists (2024)^[17]
• Elected Fellow of the Econometric Society (2016)^[18]
• Excellence in Refereeing Award from American Economic Review (2012)^[19]
• Annual Economics Outstanding Teaching Prize from Stanford University (2005)^[20]
• Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow at Hoover Institution (2003)^[12]
• Co-winner of the Best Italian Young Economist Prize, awarded by Il Sole-24 Ore (1999)^[20]
• Review of Economic Studies Tour participant (1999)^[5]

• Blundell, Richard; Pistaferri, Luigi; Preston, Ian (2008-11-01). "Consumption Inequality and Partial Insurance". American Economic Review. 98 (5): 1887–1921. doi:10.1257/aer.98.5.1887. hdl:10419/71465. ISSN 0002-8282.

• Chetty, R.; Friedman, J. N.; Olsen, T.; Pistaferri, L. (2011-05-01). "Adjustment Costs, Firm Responses, and Micro vs. Macro Labor Supply Elasticities: Evidence from Danish Tax Records". The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 126 (2): 749–804. doi:10.1093/qje/qjr013. ISSN 0033-5533. PMC 3152831.
• Meghir, Costas; Pistaferri, Luigi (2004). "Income Variance Dynamics and Heterogeneity". Econometrica. 72 (1): 1–32. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0262.2004.00476.x. hdl:10.1111/j.1468-0262.2004.00476.x. ISSN 0012-9682.
• Jappelli, Tullio; Pistaferri, Luigi (2010-09-04). "The Consumption Response to Income Changes". Annual Review of Economics. 2 (1): 479–506. doi:10.1146/annurev.economics.050708.142933. ISSN 1941-1383.
•  Blundell, Richard; Pistaferri, Luigi; Saporta-Eksten, Itay (2016-02-01). "Consumption Inequality and Family Labor Supply". American Economic Review. 106 (2): 387–435. doi:10.1257/aer.20121549. hdl:10419/154089. ISSN 0002-8282.
• Fagereng, Andreas; Guiso, Luigi; Malacrino, Davide; Pistaferri, Luigi (2020). "Heterogeneity and Persistence in Returns to Wealth". Econometrica. 88 (1): 115–170. doi:10.3982/ecta14835. hdl:11250/2753192. ISSN 0012-9682.
• Low, Hamish; Meghir, Costas; Pistaferri, Luigi (2010-09-01). "Wage Risk and Employment Risk over the Life Cycle". American Economic Review. 100 (4): 1432–1467. doi:10.1257/aer.100.4.1432. hdl:10419/47512. ISSN 0002-8282.
• Guiso, Luigi; Pistaferri, Luigi; Schivardi, Fabiano (2005). "Insurance within the Firm". Journal of Political Economy. 113 (5): 1054–1087. doi:10.1086/432136. ISSN 0022-3808.
•   Jappelli, Tullio; Pistaferri, Luigi (2014-10-01). "Fiscal Policy and MPC Heterogeneity". American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics. 6 (4): 107–136. doi:10.1257/mac.6.4.107. ISSN 1945-7707.
•  Attanasio, Orazio P.; Pistaferri, Luigi (2016-05-01). "Consumption Inequality". Journal of Economic Perspectives. 30 (2): 3–28. doi:10.1257/jep.30.2.3. ISSN 0895-3309.
•   Meghir, Costas; Pistaferri, Luigi (2011), "Earnings, Consumption and Life Cycle Choices", Handbook of Labor Economics, Elsevier, pp. 773–854, ISBN 978-0-444-53452-1, retrieved 2025-01-28
•   Low, Hamish; Pistaferri, Luigi (2015-10-01). "Disability Insurance and the Dynamics of the Incentive Insurance Trade-Off". American Economic Review. 105 (10): 2986–3029. doi:10.1257/aer.20110108. ISSN 0002-8282.
•   Pistaferri, Luigi (2003). "Anticipated and Unanticipated Wage Changes, Wage Risk, and Intertemporal Labor Supply". Journal of Labor Economics. 21 (3): 729–754. doi:10.1086/374965. ISSN 0734-306X.
•   De Giorgi, Giacomo; Frederiksen, Anders; Pistaferri, Luigi (2016). Consumption Network Effects (Report). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
•   Pistaferri, Luigi (2001). "Superior Information, Income Shocks, and the Permanent Income Hypothesis". Review of Economics and Statistics. 83 (3): 465–476. doi:10.1162/00346530152480117. ISSN 0034-6535.

• List of fellows of the Econometric Society

• Pistaferi's profile at Google Scholar
• Pistaferri's profile at Stanford
• NBER's profile