#Diogenedixit

Anti-COVID Vaccine: A Global Public Good

The events of recent weeks, from the start of the first wave of COVID-19 infections in some countries to the arrival of what seems to be a second wave in others, indicate that the world will have a hard time emerging from the current economic crisis linked to the pandemic if a safe and effective vaccine is not discovered first. There is no precedent in human memory of the health and economic sustenance of so many people depending on a single healthcare intervention; and the hopes of so many people being placed in the hands of a professional category, that of scientists, that in recent years has ...

Economic Policy, Finance, and Real Estate

More than six months after the start of the pandemic, we can use market prices to understand the opinion of investors regarding the consequences of the health shock. This is a particularly important analysis, especially given the contrast between the data coming from the real economy and that from the financial markets. Drawing inspiration from the customary international benchmark to then derive implications for Italy, we note that the United States economy contracted by one-third in the second quarter of the year, and the Fed foresees a drop in GDP of 7 percent for 2020. At the same time, the ...

Passion and Business in Publishing

A discussion with Carlo De Benedetti

Before talking about your new publishing venture, I would like to ask you some questions about your previous experience. You have been present in the publishing world since the 1980s. In these thirty years you have seen the evolution of the Italian publishing sector and the decline of the press, due first to television and then internet. This decline took place both internationally and naturally also in Italy. In this scenario, what position di Repubblica occupy? And what were the positive and negative aspects of your experience as the publisher of that newspaper? The most negative experience ...

Pinduoduo: The New Chinese E-Commerce Giant

Colin Huang is not a name known outside of China. Yet he is the man who together with Jack Ma of Alibaba and Pony Ma of Tencent (and thus WeChat) is competing for the top spots among China’s millionaires. Born in 1980, Huang comes from a working-class family and grew up in the suburbs of Hangzhou, the city in Eastern China where Jack Ma is also from, and where Alibaba has its headquarters. The company Huang created in 2015, Pinduoduo, has exceeded the value of the oil giant Shell in just five years. It is an e-commerce platform that competes directly with Alibaba and JD, but that uses messaging ...

The Choices to Make between the Real Economy and the Banking Sector

In the considerable confusion that reigns concerning economics and finance since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, various types of measures have been proposed, discussed, and adopted. Those aiming to rescue banks, but also the real economy, are particularly important. These two phenomena are in fact strictly correlated, although the connection is not always clear, and they require different measures to be adopted following precise time sequences. The fundamental problem is knowing whether it is proper to rescue the banks first, and then the real economy, or whether it is better to first ...

Finance, Oversight, and Fraud: the case of Wirecard

In the month of June, the Wirecard scandal erupted in Germany. Let's recall the main events. Until that time, Wirecard was mostly known as a success story among companies that use technology to produce banking and financial services. These are firms that some love to call "financial unicorns:" the noun evokes the special nature - whether true or presumed - of the technology used, and the adjective the activity in the sector of banking and finance. But all of the sudden, a statement released by the Central Bank of the Philippines confirmed some important news: Wirecard has a budget hole of almost ...

Recovery Fund: How to Distribute the Resources among Member States?

The Member States of the European Union are currently engaged in difficult negotiations on the Recovery Fund, the fund of 750 billion euros whose purpose is to help European regions recover from the Covid-19 shock. The public debate is dominated by the question of "conditionalities," that is, to what extent the provision of the funds must be conditional upon specific economic policy choices by the beneficiary countries. Although important, this question risks overshadowing another decisive issue, that of the criteria for allocation of the resources among the Member States. Should the EU favor ...

The Solitude of the WHO

"They’re giving [the information] to us 15 minutes before it appears on CCTV," the Chinese state channel. This, according to Gauden Galea, the World Health Organization (WHO) representative in Beijing. His words clearly describe the UN agency's frustration toward China at the beginning of January, with the attempt to scrape up the little information available on the new coronavirus, the one that has now infected almost 12 million people around the world, provoking over 550,000 deaths. This statement is part of an account by the United States news agency Associated Press[1] that confirms the ...

The Solitude of the WHO

"They’re giving [the information] to us 15 minutes before it appears on CCTV," the Chinese state channel. This, according to Gauden Galea, the World Health Organization (WHO) representative in Beijing. His words clearly describe the UN agency's frustration toward China at the beginning of January, with the attempt to scrape up the little information available on the new coronavirus, the one that has now infected almost 12 million people around the world, provoking over 550,000 deaths. This statement is part of an account by the United States news agency Associated Press[1] that confirms the ...

Forecasting in Times of Uncertainty: It Can Be Done

The Covid-19 emergency has caused a strong change in the business models of companies in many sectors. For some of them it has simply been an accelerator, for others something absolutely new. It is inevitable that, faced with this path of evolution, control systems, that have the goal of supporting decision-making processes and orienting management behavior, cannot be left out of this change. In particular, in a context characterized by a high level of discontinuity with respect to the past and by high levels of uncertainty, above all traditional tools for forecasting results and setting goals ...