Managerial Insights

2023-01-23 Andrea Beltratti, Alessia Bezzecchi

The PNRR and Finance for Sustainability

Sustainability and policy-making. The Brundtland Report of 1987 reminded all of us that we do not inherit the planet from our parents, but we borrow it from our children, introducing a definition of sustainability that is still relevant today. Some progress has been made, especially if we consider the results in light of the concurrent increase by 60 percent of the overall population, from 5 to 8 billion people. European economic policy has chosen to give great weight to the goal of sustainability, potentially placing the production sector in a position of competitive disadvantage compared to ...

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2023-01-19 Andrea Beltratti, Alessia Bezzecchi

Il PNRR e la finanza per la sostenibilità

Sostenibilità e policy-making. Il Brundtland Report nel 1987 ricordava a tutti noi che il pianeta non si eredita dai genitori, ma si prende a prestito dai figli, introducendo una definizione di sostenibilità ancora oggi attuale. Qualche progresso è stato fatto, specie se valutiamo i risultati alla luce del concomitante aumento del 60 per cento della popolazione complessiva, da 5 a 8 miliardi. La politica economica europea ha scelto di dare un grande peso all’obiettivo di sostenibilità, ponendo potenzialmente il settore produttivo in posizione di svantaggio competitivo rispetto al resto del ...

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2023-01-19 Andrea Beltratti, Alessia Bezzecchi

Il PNRR e la finanza per la sostenibilità

Sostenibilità e policy-making. Il Brundtland Report nel 1987 ricordava a tutti noi che il pianeta non si eredita dai genitori, ma si prende a prestito dai figli, introducendo una definizione di sostenibilità ancora oggi attuale. Qualche progresso è stato fatto, specie se valutiamo i risultati alla luce del concomitante aumento del 60 per cento della popolazione complessiva, da 5 a 8 miliardi. La politica economica europea ha scelto di dare un grande peso all’obiettivo di sostenibilità, ponendo potenzialmente il settore produttivo in posizione di svantaggio competitivo rispetto al resto del ...

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2022-12-13 Donato Masciandaro

Short-sighted Monetary Policy: A Winning Horse or a Scapegoat?

The Fed and the ECB are by now like the Pythia of the Oracle of Delphi: they speak little, and poorly. They must always be interpreted, with all of the related unknowns. It’s an opportunistic strategy, that increases the risk of stagflation. To understand why, let’s set some ground rules. We’ll start from the fact that both central banks want to fight inflation, and bring interest rates onto a path in which the remuneration of assets, both real and financial, and thus interest rates, is compatible with price growth of 2%, by 2024. To be clearer, the starting assumption means basing monetary ...

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2022-11-16 Roberto Ruozi

Financing the Ecological Transition

The ecological transition has been a subject of debate for many decades now, with much said and written. In reality, in recent years it has reached crucial importance for the economic and social development of our planet. It is in fact a very complex subject, that is difficult to define, especially in practical terms, and changes continuously while regarding various areas, including the decarbonization of the economy, the circular economy, the reduction of the use of plastic, urban regeneration, sustainable tourism, and adaptation and mitigation of risks due to climate change. The solution to ...

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2022-11-08 Donato Masciandaro, Gianmarco Ottaviano

Has Financial Fair Play Changed the European Soccer Industry?

Last summer, the president of the FIGC, Gabriele Gravina, spoke to Sky Sport to present the twelfth edition of the Soccer Report, developed by the FIGC Study Center, in collaboration with AREL and PwC Italia. The report had good and bad parts, we could say, even though there was a lot more bad than good. “The data in our Soccer Report is ruthless as always […] in 12 years we have accumulated aggregate losses of 4.1 billion euros; we have lost one million euros a day […] 79% of our clubs have closed their accounts with losses. In the last 12 years our world has practically doubled its debts, ...

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2022-10-25 Fabrizio Perretti

Work Less and Earn More: a Utopia?

The world of work always occupies a central position in the economic and political debate, and that pre-eminence was also evident in the recent election campaign. As stated in Art. 1 of the Constitution, our republic is founded on labor, so it should be no surprise that this question is central in the national debate. This occurred in particular after the pandemic, in which the world of work was going through evident transformations and changes – not only in Italy: the development of remote work, the wave of layoffs that has affected different professions, and the lack of labor in some sectors. ...

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2022-10-03 Donato Masciandaro

Monetary Normalization: The Lesson of Whatever It Takes

On July 26, 2012, Mario Draghi pronounced the words that would enter the Treccani Dictionary as an expression that “opened another, unprecedented horizon in European politics.” To shed light on the significance of “whatever it takes,” we can tell the story of the evolution of the monetary announcement as an opera in three acts. Act I: We are at the end of the 1970s, when the dominant problem for the policies of advanced countries is to defeat the Great Inflation. Economic analysis offered a recipe to obtain an effective monetary policy, that was based on two ingredients, mixed together: ...

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2022-09-21 Cecilia Attanasio Ghezzi

Beijing Returns to Coal

Last August, we saw the skyline of megalopolises like Shanghai and Chongqing go dark. Factors that assemble machines and electronic devices then distributed in the rest of the world stopped due to a lack of electricity. Long lines formed in front of recharging stations for electric vehicles, while river flow was reduced to the point of preventing navigation by boats of a certain size. Energy rationing affected above all the southwestern regions of the immense territory of China, where up until now, such measures had never been seen; in the region of Sichuan, in particular. This area gets 80 percent ...

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2022-09-07 Gianmarco Ottaviano

Gorbachev’s Ambivalent Legacy in Russia

In the Bible (Daniele, 2:31-35) King Nebuchadnezzar dreamed of a colossal statue with a head made of gold, the chest and arms of silver, the stomach and hips of bronze, the legs of iron and the feet made partly of iron and partly of clay. A stone broke off the mountain and hit the statue’s feet, smashing them and making it collapse. According to the prophet the story is a metaphor for the succession of earthly kingdoms, destined sooner or later to collapse due to the weakness of the values on which they are founded. The Soviet Union dissolved on December 26, 1991. At the start of that year it ...

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