Managerial Insights
The New Nationalism of Chinese Consumers
The golden age of the continuously expanding market beyond the Great Wall is over. The period that was a true driver for the most important Western brands – at least in the last ten years – is ending. Chinese consumers, who are young, attracted by novelty, and have growing spending power[1] – are following the path indicated by politics and increasingly look to Chinese brands to satisfy their desires.[2] Patriotism, dual circulation, and the recent international scandals, such as that of Xinjiang cotton produced in detention camps that has forced Western and Chinese brands to take a position ...
Economic Sanctions Against Russia: The Continuation of Policy By Other Means
“War is a mere continuation of policy by other means. We see, therefore, that War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means.” Thus wrote the Prussian general Carl Von Clausewitz two centuries ago in his book On War, a treatise of military strategy widely read in the last century, also in Marxist and Leninist circles; to the point of becoming a part of the study programs of Soviet military academies in the years in which Vladimir Putin began his training at the KGB school in Leningrad ...
Past, Present, and Future of Bank Concentrations
The phenomenon of bank concentration, as I have said on multiple occasions also with reference to other types of financial operations, lends itself to varied judgments in relation to both its formal intrinsic value and its practical application. Indeed the objectives and results of bank concentration, a phenomenon which has had significant effects in almost all countries in the world in the post-WWII period, have changed over the course of time, and the evaluations that have been expressed on it in different periods have been conditioned by the respective historical contexts. In our country, there ...
The Chinese Renaissance and the Winter Olympic Games
When the Olympic Committee assigned the 2022 Winter Olympics seven years ago, in Beijing there was talk of "airpocalypse": the Chinese capital and its region were at the center of global attention due to a level of pollution so high that the population was forced to stay at home and factories had to close. The tradition of winter sports was based on just a few years of experience and the dry nature of the area that was supposed to host the outdoor events was such that, despite the harsh temperatures, it very rarely snowed. President Xi Jinping put himself on the line: "We will keep our promises," ...
Sustainable Social Finance & ESG investing
The role of the Sustainable Development Goals in pursing sustainability on the part of all stakeholders has made urgent the codification and relative measurement of ESG criteria in a holistic vision of investments and finance. The considerable diversity of the ratings of the main international agencies risks confusing companies and investors, hindering the pursuit of actions aimed at reaching sustainability. The work of the European Commission on the definition of the taxonomy is more advanced for the “E-Environmental” dimension, with the goal of completing and finalizing it with the “S-Social” ...
European Green Monetary Policy: A Double-Edged Sword
From the standpoint of European monetary policy, 2021 was an important year, with the announcement by the European Central Bank (ECB) of a revision in its strategy. The founding pillar is very clear: in accordance with the European treaties, the primary goal of monetary policy will continue to be the stability of the internal value of the euro. Given that primary goal, the ECB will have the secondary goal of supporting the other aims of the Union’s economic policy. In the list of secondary aims, the quality of the environment has appeared for the first time. Then, in a parallel document, the ...
Green Jobs and the Challenge of the Ecological Transition
According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), the United Nations agency that deals with the labor market, the transition towards a green economy can act as a new engine for growth thanks to the creation of “good” jobs in both advanced and developing countries. The ILO recognizes, though, that this outcome is certainly not guaranteed, because new green jobs will not automatically also be good jobs. They will become good only through effective action, adopting economic and social policies that help workers adapt to the new market dynamics. This means first of all policies aimed at ...
The Communist Party Crowns President Xi Jinping
Like Mao Zedong, like Deng Xiaoping. Actually, even more. Xi Jinping is the nucleus around which the party, the army, and the whole country must coalesce. And Xi Jinping thought is the only path to follow to pursue the Chinese dream and the rebirth of the nation. There can be no stumbles until 2049, when the People's Republic will celebrate the one hundred year anniversary of its founding. This is the sense of the "historical resolution" that closed the last important political appointment before the 2022 Congress, that which, if everything goes according to plan, will consecrate the perpetual ...
How the First Bottom-Up Food Policy Can Be Born in Rome
According to the United Nations, over 55% of the global population lives in urban environments today,[1] and the global trend continues to grow, with projections indicating that the percentage will reach 68% by 2050. In our country, this threshold was already passed in 2018, and today more than 70% of Italians live in urbanized contexts. Thus, in a perspective in which food demand in cities will continue to increase, it has become essential to plan the environmental development of urban food systems. This need is based on the data published in 2019 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ...
Interesting Developments in the Relationship between Banks and SMEs
An analysis of what is happening in our country in recent years indicates that the relationship between banks and SMEs is changing, even though the problem is not simple, and to understand it we must differentiate the two worlds. On the one hand, there are big banks (hereinafter BBs), local banks (hereinafter LBs), and new banks; on the other hand, there are SMEs operating in very different sectors, such as manufacturing, construction, ICT, professional services, and so on, but also with varying dimensions, as well as track records that can be more or less consolidated, or that remain to be invented, ...