E&MFLASH

2021-08-27 Donato Masciandaro

ECB: The New Route Between Hawks and Doves

Last July, the president of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde announced a strategy review of ECB monetary policy. There was great anticipation of what the new inflation target would be. The expectations were understandable: explicitly stating the inflation target, as we will see later, is the key to monetary policy, representing the main tool to orient expectations. The importance of the link between the inflation target and management of expectations is an issue on which hawks and doves can generally agree. But things change when we question the quantitative formulation of that target. It ...

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2021-08-23 Cecilia Attanasio Ghezzi

The Revolution Comes Lying Down

“If you can’t get up and you refuse to kneel, all you can do is lie flat.” It sounds like the slogan of a non-violent revolution, and it may be just that; at least in China. It all began with a post online last April: “Lying flat means justice.”[1] The author is Luo Huazhong, a young man who left his alienating factory job at 26 years of age to travel around by bicycle, and after returning to his home town, decided to share his new lifestyle: reduce consumption to the minimum and enjoy the little things, work only as much as necessary to earn what he needs to eat and have clothes, and ...

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2021-08-23 Roberto Ruozi

The SPAC Market: the Cases of the United States and Italy

SPACs (Special Purpose Acquisition Companies) are financial instruments created almost twenty years ago in the United States. Economia&Management dealt with these types of companies back in 2017 and 2018,[1] assessing the situation in the US and Italy; in the latter, SPACs emerged in 2011 not structured based on specific regulations or laws, but through a combination of legal forms allowed for other types of financial companies. When we speak of SPACs, we always need to refer to the regulation based on which each has been constructed. Despite having the same goals, different jurisdictions can ...

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2021-08-13 Gianmarco Ottaviano

Brexit and the City

In Italy, we cut red ribbons at Christmas when we open gifts. Across the Channel, cutting red ribbons is an obsession that dominates public debate, reaching a fever pitch when the European Union is involved. Naturally, we’re not talking about the ribbons used for holidays, but of “red tape,” the term used in the United Kingdom to refer to an apparently infinite series of bureaucratic procedures that prevent the animal spirits of the market from giving free play to their creative instincts. The use of the term red tape comes from the fact that in the past, legal documentation was in fact ...

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2021-07-16 Claudio Cosentino, Adelina di Pietro

Sustainability in Water Companies: The Case of ACEA ATO2

Sustainability is one of the largest challenges that every company has to face in order to evolve towards an economic system that is able to combine protection of the environment, social and economic development. Water service managers are defined as "sustainable by vocation," since their fundamental mission is to guarantee present and future generations access to water services, a primary good for survival, ensuring the protection of the quality and quantity of water resources. They integrate the environmental dimension with economic development and the ethical-social dimension to simultaneously ...

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2021-07-12 Donato Masciandaro

Interest Rates, Inflation, and Central Banks: Words Matter

Since last spring, the spotlight has been on the dynamic of interest rates, and on the effect they can have on the risk of inflation. Everything began last May, when the data relating to consumer price growth in the United States showed the largest increase since 2008. It was a sign of an economy with exuberant aggregate demand, that is reflected in both real and nominal economic growth. So it is normal for interest rates on US government bonds to have risen, along with the dollar exchange rate. From that time, the crucial question has been to understand how temporary this phenomenon of price ...

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2021-06-28 Cecilia Attanasio Ghezzi

A 100-Year March

On July 1, the birth of the Chinese Communist Party will be celebrated with great fanfare. It is a date of convenience, because Party cells certain already existed before that July of 1921, while historically the first Congress was held only on July 23. But Mao Zedong did not remember the exact date, so he decided otherwise in 1941. A hundred years later, the skyline of the main cities will be lit with the Party colors, the army will parade, and there will be demonstrations and celebrations everywhere, because as recently stressed by current president Xi Jinping, it will be an occasion to "educate ...

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2021-06-23 Fabrizio Perretti

Americanism and Managerial Models

Managers use new management models to face the problems that arise each time changes appear – in the dimensions and complexity of businesses or in the international competitive environment – that challenge current practices. Those models contain not only a set of management techniques, but also represent the expression of a certain organizational ideology; they are cognitive maps of the social reality that influence the perception and actions of managers and justify their power and authority.[1] While it is true that managerial models are not determined only by economic and technological factors, ...

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2021-06-07 Gianmarco Ottaviano

G7: The Big Step Forward on Global Taxation of Multinational Corporations

A “big step forward... towards an unprecedented global agreement on tax reform.” This is how the European Commission for Economy Paolo Gentiloni greeted the agreement reached in London during the last meeting of the finance ministers of the G7, the group of seven large countries formed by Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, in which Gentiloni represented the European Union. The aim of the agreement is to work together to fight a certain type of tax avoidance at the international level, that according to some estimates, subtracts 240 billion dollars ...

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2021-05-24 Cecilia Attanasio Ghezzi

China Is Also Getting Old

The last Chinese census provided a picture of the very new China: 1.412 billion people, of whom over 60 percent live in cities and only 63.4 percent are in working age, versus 70 percent just ten years ago.[1] To be clear, over-65 people are now 13 percent of the total versus just 9 percent in the 2010 census. “China is growing old without first having grown rich,” wrote the New York Times,[2] paraphrasing the well-known maxim of Deng Xiaoping. And the trend won’t be easy to stop. The birth rate dropped for the fourth year in a row, such that in 2020 only 12 million children were born, ...

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