Managerial Insights

2019-12-23 Cecilia Attanasio Ghezzi

Digital Surveillance

The market for surveillance technologies will have a value of 62 billion dollars by 2023 (1), and it seems that in this field as well, China will be dominant. Eight of the ten most surveilled cities in the world are in the People's Republic (2) where facial recognition is already used in many rail stations, banks, airports, in some school buildings, many hotels, and in subway systems. And that is not all: starting this month, whoever wants to a SIM card will be required to submit to a facial scan (3). This is the result of an ambitious government program launched in 2017 (4) that foresees covering ...

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2019-12-19 Andrea Lanza

Creating value for business clients

The recent debate on the evolution of business marketing shows a "disconnect" between the trends that have emerged in the past decade - in the institutional macro-environment, the competitive meso-environment and the business micro-environment - and the attention to the consequences of the changes associated with those trends in business-to-business dynamics. In light of this evolution, the book sets the ambitious goal of examining the debate and identifying the missing "pieces," so as to fill in the gap between academic debate and managerial practice. In particular, the first elements to be examined ...

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2019-12-12 Roberto Ruozi

The European Banking Union: a Proposal for Discussion

A few weeks ago, the German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz published an article in the Financial Times in which, starting from a non-paper prepared by his Ministry, he summarized his thinking regarding the European Banking Union (EBU). The article was, and still is, the subject of great interest. It is well-known that the EBU was decided on a number of years ago with the aim of creating a single European banking market based on three fundamental pillars: common oversight of banks; uniform regulations on the resolution of bank crises; and homogenization and integration of regulations on bank deposit ...

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2019-12-04 Donato Masciandaro

Lagarde, A Wise Owl Between Hawks and Doves

The handover of responsibility from Mario Draghi to the new president of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde was marked by three aspects: two results, and one question. The two results regard the ability to implement unconventional monetary policies and the reliability of the Bank's institutional structure. The question regards the future. The first result can be appreciated by remembering that Draghi's term coincided with macroeconomic events that were extraordinary, in the literal sense of the term. The dual recession that the European Union suffered in the years between 2008 and 2013 ...

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2019-12-03 Cecilia Attanasio Ghezzi

The Dark Side of Beijing

When a semester ends, Chinese students usually return to their home regions to spend time with their families. For some years, though, those who return to the extreme western region of China, Xinjiang, find that friends, relatives, and neighbors have disappeared. "They are in a training school set up by the government," the police and Communist Party officials explain, also stressing that the interned people cannot leave, despite not being criminals. The officials then have to add: "I'm sure that you will support them, because this is for their own good, and also for your own good." These recommendations ...

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2019-11-25 Andrea Beltratti, Alessia Bezzecchi

Real data for real estate

"Alternative" is again a fashionable term. Yet we are no longer talking about travel or lifestyle, as happened in the 1970s. Today investors are seeking alternative assets, while data providers and many companies seek to stand out in the collection of alternative data, and in their processing through unconventional models and algorithms, often based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). The stakes are high: on the one hand, a better understanding of consumer behavior; on the other, the streamlining of production processes. Real estate and data The real estate sector has never ...

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2019-11-18 Gianmarco Ottaviano

What Globalization Has to Do with the Football Industry

Globalization changes the conduct of companies. On the one hand, they have access to new international markets, while on the other, they have to deal with new competitors on their own domestic markets. Yet there is an underlying asymmetry. While all companies suffer the harm due to the increase of internal competition, only the most efficient are able to offset that with the benefits linked to greater penetration of foreign markets. The reason is that access to those markets entails additional costs. Some are determined by greater complexity in logistics and distribution of products abroad. Others ...

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2019-11-12 Elisa Bortoluzzi Dubach

Patronage is the Right Path

In the period of profound transformation we are living through - the development of new technologies, our bombardment with information, the environmental crisis, the phenomenon of large-scale migration, and economic challenges - the man of the new millennium is experiencing a moment of deep disorientation, of which art is an accurate reflection. In what way? The change in languages, the innovation in the way of using art works and their pervasiveness in our daily life, have certainly made art more ambiguous, uncertain, and versatile. Yet at the same time, many of the great changes that have occurred ...

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2019-11-06 Carlo Secchi

Development and Wellbeing: A Question of Works

The economic development and fortunes of States over the centuries have been sustained and often conditioned by the construction of infrastructure. This has allowed many backwards and economically depressed regions to reach excellent levels of prosperity. In addition, the system of infrastructure has had, and still has, an evident geopolitical impact. In that regard, the Treaty of Rome of 1957 expressly provided for a common transport policy in order to develop a single European market, identified as one of the pillars to launch the path towards continental unity. Stressing the importance of having ...

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2019-11-05 Cecilia Attanasio Ghezzi

If Beijing Goes to War (against Pollution)

The smog of large Chinese cities no longer makes the front pages of the newspapers. And this time it's not due to censure. According to a recent report from the UN, emissions in China have fallen by 70 percent since 2013, and atmospheric pollution by 36 percent (1). How did this happen? The political will was enormous, and goes under the slogan of "Environmental Civilization" launched by the Communist Party of China in 2007 and revived by Xi Jinping as a war against pollution. Coal-fired heating has been prohibited, factories have been moved outside of cities, and the most heavily polluting companies ...

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