Alessia Aspide is a PhD researcher at Leiden University, Institute of Political Science. She holds a BSc degree in Economics from the University of Naples Federico II and an MSc degree in Political Economy of Europe from the London School of Economics. She works on a project titled ‘The Micro- foundations of Debt Crises’, hosted at the Leiden University and funded by the European Research Council (ERC). In particular, she studies the political economy of sovereign debt. Her research focuses on how institutions and citizens’ preferences interact to shape incentives and constraints in fiscal policymaking.