Alessandra Voena

Alessandra Voena is a labour and development economist whose research focuses primarily on the economics of the family and the economics of science and innovation. Her most recent work studies the economic consequences of the cultural norms around marriage on human capital investments in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. 

Voena is a Research Affiliate at CEPR, a faculty research fellow at NBER, and served as a Ruffolo Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. Voena received a PhD and MA in economics from Stanford University in 2011 and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Torino in Italy in 2005. She was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2017 and the Carlo Alberto Medal in the same year.