Andrea Vindigni is Professor of Political Economy at IMT Lucca. He was previously Assistant Professor of Politics at Princeton University. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Toulouse, and has been a post-doctoral fellow at MIT, and a visiting professor of political science at Stanford University. His research interests focus on the political economy of a broad class of institutions. In particular, he has written on the political determinants of job protection legislation, on the political economy of democratic constitutional choice, on the effects of wars on political institutions and democratic transitions. More recently he has also written on the political and economic origins of state capacity, of state power and of military dictatorships, and on the political economy of religiosity, redistribution and economic growth.