Overview
Luigi Pistaferri is the Guido Cazzavillan Professor of Economics at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at SIEPR. He is also affiliated with NBER, CEPR, and IZA. His research spans consumption, earnings inequality, insurance mechanisms, and disability insurance over the life cycle.
Key Contributions / Features
- Low and Pistaferri (2015, AER): Structural life-cycle model (PSID, male heads HS or less, 1984–2008) estimating the incentive-insurance tradeoff under three health states via indirect inference; Type I error 67% (under-45) / 37% (over-45) for severely disabled; application elasticity 0.018 for severely disabled vs. 2.22 for moderately disabled; food stamps complement DI for severely disabled while substituting for moderately disabled; welfare-improving to increase generosity and reduce screening strictness. See Low and Pistaferri 2015 — Disability Insurance and the Dynamics of the Incentive-Insurance Tradeoff.
- Low and Pistaferri (2019, NBER WP 26513): Empirical paper documenting a 21.5 pp gender gap in Type I errors using HRS–SSA F831 matched data; identifies SSA vocational-stage bias (not medical bias) via disability vignettes; labor market outcomes confirm these are genuine false rejections.
- Low and Pistaferri (2020, Fiscal Studies): Survey article reframing DI policy design around type I/II error rates and five policy dimensions; argues type I errors (false rejections, 37–54% rate) are the dominant inefficiency in US DI.
- Broader consumption and inequality research: Extensive contributions to empirical measurement of income and consumption inequality and the role of insurance mechanisms in smoothing household consumption across life-cycle shocks.
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