Managerial Insights

2022-01-03 Donato Masciandaro

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 ...

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2021-12-14 Gianmarco Ottaviano

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 ...

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2021-11-29 Cecilia Attanasio Ghezzi

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 ...

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2021-11-27 Francesco Panié, Valentino Affinita

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 ...

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2021-11-17 Roberto Ruozi

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, ...

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2021-11-03 Cecilia Attanasio Ghezzi

The New Chinese Web Celebrities, between Growth of the Digital Economy and a Government Squeeze

What ever happened to the "lipstick king?" Is Li Jiaqi, also known as Austin Li, still able to sell 15,000 lip glosses in five hours of streaming, or does his work have to adapt to the new China of shared prosperity and the ban on effeminate looks? With his 45 million followers on Douyin, the original Chinese version of the social network that in Europe we know as TikTok, Li may be the best-known of Chinese influencers and the digital economy that has developed around them, known as the "Wanghong economy." There is no doubt that Livestreamers, KOL (key opinion leaders), and new social platforms ...

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2021-11-02 Donato Masciandaro

Si vis pacem, para bellum: Afghanistan, the Taliban, and Financial Quarantine

The European Union is deciding if and when to reopen relations with the new government of Afghanistan. The EU, like almost all of the international community, has stated that it is worried about possible actions by the Taliban regime that could violate the population's civil and political rights. So it is not considering the possibility of a formal recognition of the regime. At the same time, there must be a decision on how to open a "calibrated relationship" with the Taliban government – the expression used by Brussels – to prevent other countries from gaining additional space, countries ...

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2021-10-18 Simona Cuomo

Enemy Number One: Rhetoric

Diversity Management (DM), understood as a set of policies, practices, and actions that, in the context of human resources management, are aimed at managing the diversity of workers, began its entry and spread in Europe and Italy starting at the end of the 1990s through branches of large companies from the English-speaking world. Currently, abetted above all by the health emergency that has contributed to giving visibility to the limited attention focused on the issue of diversity, DM has spread in most industrialized countries. What is known as the "She-cession,"[1] that describes the strong ...

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2021-10-07 Gianmarco Ottaviano

Kabul, Beijing, and the Geopolitics of the Ecological Transition

Afghanistan is a land of treasure. Recently, the international press, and it appears, the new Taliban government as well, have been anxiously following the fate of the Bactrian treasure, discovered in the north of Afghanistan shortly before the Soviet invasion of 1979. In six tombs that can be dated from the first century BCE to the first century CE, archeologists led by Viktor Sarianidi found more than 20,000 artifacts, including gold amorettos, dolphins, divinities, and dragons studded with turquoise, cornel, and lapis lazuli, but also rings, coins, weapons, earrings, bracelets, necklaces, and ...

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2021-09-27 Cecilia Attanasio Ghezzi

Evergrande: The Chinese Version of Lehman Brothers?

Does Evergrande risk becoming the Chinese version of Lehman Brothers? It's a legitimate question, that for weeks has been the focus of attention of financial analysts and the pages of the largest newspapers. There is certainly the fear that the collapse of a company this size could have repercussions on the entire Chinese financial system, but for the authorities in Beijing, it seems more important not to betray the promise to teach a lesson to the debt-laden behemoths in the country. So those who expected a state rescue have been disappointed, but that doesn't mean that "Chinese characteristics" ...

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