#Diogenedixit

2019-10-09 Donato Masciandaro

The Report Cards for Draghi and the Euro

With the change at the helm of the European Central Bank (ECB) from Mario Draghi to Christine Lagarde, can we try to issue grades on the relationship between monetary policy, the euro, and the Italian economy? Such an exercise is a subject to be handled very prudently. In fact, no direct relationship exists between monetary instruments and the relevant macroeconomic effects. Rather, there is a chain of relationships, of which monetary policy can be one of the first links, while macroeconomic results are the last link. The challenge for a central banker is to understand under what conditions the ...

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2019-09-25 Cecilia Attanasio Ghezzi

China: A 70-year-long March

A military parade will mark the 70th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. On October 1, in Tiananmen Square, the communist leadership will delight in showing the world the progress made since Mao Zedong declared the birth of the New China: from a poor agricultural society to a global economic power in less than a century. Those who were around when the People's Republic was founded cannot fail to remember the food-rationing cards, the hunger, and the crude political purges that reached their apex during the decade of the Cultural Revolution. And then the 1980s, when the economic reforms ...

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2019-09-25 Leonella Gori

The CFO: A Technical Figure, or not?

In the preparation of this article, thanks are due to Dott. Francesco Masironi for his patient work collecting information during the initial phases of the research. In response to the question “What counts more, perception or facts?” the marketing world has a rather precise and clear answer, that aims in a single direction, with almost no ambiguity: while facts are important, the ability to make them perceptible in a "correct" and convenient manner is probably even more important. An example? Some years ago, one of the most famous violinists in the world repeated a superb musical execution ...

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2019-09-25 Roberto Ruozi

Watch Out for Libra

Since Facebook announced that in 2020 it will launch a new currency to transmit monetary values globally, there have been many comments with decisive positive or negative conclusions. The Libra phenomenon – the name of the new currency – has in fact sparked great interest, but the judgments expressed to this point cannot be considered definitive, since many of its aspects are not certain yet, including because many of the technical, financial, and technological problems are still being addressed, and because we don’t know what position the oversight authorities will take. In truth, the authorities ...

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2019-09-24 Gianmarco Ottaviano

The Tariff War

“When a country like the United States is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win.” These were the words with which U.S. President Donald Trump announced the “trade war” (with the imposition of tariffs) between the United States and the rest of the world on March 2, 2018, on Twitter. The reference was to the deficit between American exports and imports, that in absolute terms has never been less than 400 billion dollars in the past decade, and in 2018, touched the record level of 600 billion. This ...

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2019-08-28 Donato Masciandaro

Libra Glitters But Is Not Gold

Not all that glitters is gold. The old popular maxim provides the first comment that can be offered in response to Facebook’s announcement that it wants to issue its own digital currency, called Libra. If we assess the announcement from the standpoint of collective well-being, we must ask if this innovation meets the requirements that a currency must have to improve the allocation of goods and services. The response, based on the information available, is negative. The announcement that there could be a new currency in circulation spontaneously begs the question: do we need it? In order to answer, ...

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2019-08-28 Andrea Beltratti, Alessia Bezzecchi

RE-flexibility, RE-generation, RE-modeling

The world of real estate is wrongly considered a “petrified forest,” to borrow a term used thirty years ago to describe the situation of the Italian banks. Many top managers think that in the coming years real estate will be the sector with the lowest intensity of business transformation. The question of the degree transformation of the sector in coming years is very important for economic growth, given the many implications of real estate for the daily life of businesses and people. Yet if we look at the sector from a bottom-up standpoint, the image that emerges is very different than that ...

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Gianluca Salviotti, Severino Meregalli

HIT Radar General Report 3rd Edition

Click on the icons to download the e-book now, in Italian and English, in PDF format and ePub fixed layout. To read the ePub fixed layout file we recommend using the iBooks software on mac, iPhone and iPad, Readium or Adobe Digital Editions on PC and Google Play books on Android smartphones and tablets. ENGLISH

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Fabrizio Perretti

Goodbye Workers?

This Dossier is dedicated to work, and more specifically to workers in businesses and organizations in a broad sense. "Workers" is an almost outdated term that, similar to what happened with "laborers," is now disappearing from the managerial vocabulary. In its place people speak of "human resources" and "human capital," and no longer of "employees" but "associates." Yet we are not faced with a simple linguistic change, but rather an epistemological break that reflects a profound transformation that has occurred in businesses and in the processes that govern the selection and access of workers ...

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Gianluca Salviotti, Leonardo De Rossi, Nico Abbatemarco

HIT Radar: Application Focus – Industrial Operations

Industrial IoT Platform Industrial IoT (IIoT) platforms act as control hubs for all the industrial automation solutions – from manufacturing to predictive analytics - empowered by the Internet of Things. While these are still early days for the Internet of Thigs, technology providers are investing billions building new-consolidated platforms. You should be prepared to exploit this new application paradigm by studying the market, building-in security and, eventually, developing your first POCs and partnerships. It may take years to develop and scale a platform, but now is the time to make investment ...

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