Dr Vito Polito

Department of Economics

Reader in Economics

Profile image for academic staff member Dr Vito Polito
Profile picture of Profile image for academic staff member Dr Vito Polito
v.polito@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 6109

Full contact details

Dr Vito Polito
Department of Economics
Room 506
9 Mappin Street
Sheffield
S1 4DT
Profile

Vito joined the University of Sheffield as Reader in Macroeconomics in January 2018. Previously he held posts as Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellow (York, 2006-2008), Lecturer (Cardiff, 2008-2013) and Senior Lecturer (Bath, 2013 – 2017).

He gained a PhD in Economics in 2009 at the University of York with a thesis on Vector Autoregressive Analysis of Macroeconomic Policy.

Between 2002 and 2007 he was specialist tax consultant for a project on the cross-country comparison of the Italian corporate tax system sponsored by a grant from the Italian Ministry of Finance. Vito is author of the Macroeconomics Study Guide of the LSE International Programme.

Research interests

Quantitative macroeconomics, in particular applications of control theory within reduced-form (VAR) and structural (Dynamic General Equilibrium) models to study macroeconomic policy.

Specific research topics include:

  • Fiscal policy sustainability
  • optimal monetary policy
  • sovereign credit risk
  • unemployment and social insurance
  • optimal macroeconomic policy in heteroskedastic models.

Vito is willing to supervise students interested in quantitative macroeconomics and its intersections with private and public finance, using either VAR, DSGE or OLG models.

Specific areas of research he would supervise include:

  • analysis of time-varying volatility models
  • monetary and fiscal policy
  • sovereign credit risk
  • unemployment insurance
  • ageing and public finances sustainability.
Publications

Journal articles

Working papers

  • Polito V (2020) Nonlinear Business Cycle and Optimal Policy: A VSTAR Perspective. CESifo Working Papers, CESifo Working Paper No. 8060. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Polito V (2017) Job Search, Unemployment Protection and Informal Work in Advanced Economies. CESifo Working Papers, 6763 2017. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Long I & Polito V () Unemployment, Crime and Social Insurance. SSRN Electronic Journal. View this article in WRRO RIS download Bibtex download
Grants

Vito has received funding from the Network for Studies on Aging and Retirement (Netspar, 2022-2025) to undertake a research project entitled "Pension Systems (Un)sustainability and Fiscal Constraints: A Comparative Analysis." 

The project evaluates the sustainability of the state pension systems of major advanced economies using a multi-period overlapping generations (OLG) model. 

The analysis takes a macroeconomic perspective and the aim is to provide empirical evidence on fiscal limits and the sustainability of the pension systems in the ten largest EU countries (Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain), the United Kingdom and the United States. 

The model is calibrated to match key aggregate moments of the economy and fiscal sector in each country up to the pre-pandemic period (2019), conditional on the demographic structure and the pension system regulatory framework. The latter includes (i) the replacement ratio of pensions, (ii) the age of mandatory retirement, (iii) the regulations for early retirement and (iv) the rules determining the social security tax rate and base. We use this initial calibration to quantify the maximum amount of pension expenditure that each country can sustain (i.e. its pension limit), the pension space and the probability of reaching the pension limit by 2020. We then undertake two types of simulation exercises. The first looks at how pension limits are likely to evolve over the next thirty years, given the demographic projections of the United Nations up until 2050. The second considers how a number of often-advocated reforms of the pension system would impact on pension limits and the welfare in each country. 

The project will provide a key analytical component of the Netspar research agenda which is to evaluate the adequacy and resilience of national pension systems, including that of the Netherlands.

Teaching activities
  • ECN302: Advanced Macroeconomics
  • ECN6620: International Money and Finance