Focus Africa

2023-09-13 Donato Masciandaro

Digital Euro: Moving Forward with Caution and 'Education'

Do we need a digital euro? The answer is affirmative if the ECB keeps its promise to create a complementary public currency that will be useful for European citizens, and also enhance effectiveness from both a monetary policy and banking supervision perspective. We must move forward, but with caution. A middle ground must be found between the skeptical positions of those who, out of ignorance or convenience, do not see the need for this innovation and, on the other extreme, the superficial enthusiasm of those who see the digital euro as the sole currency of the future, replacing both physical ...

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2023-08-01 Cecilia Attanasio Ghezzi

2023: Escape from Beijing?

"Foreign investments are welcome, and China's doors will be even more open than before," said then-Vice Premier Liu He at this year's exclusive Davos forum. Less than a month earlier, President Xi Jinping had declared, "We must ensure that foreign investments already in the country remain here and work to attract others of high quality." However, despite the words the Chinese leadership has used for months seeking to reassure foreign businessmen and investors, the uncertainty about the direction the world's second-largest economy is taking runs so deep that it is undermining confidence in the ...

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2023-07-26 Fabrizio Perretti

The Sentimental Re-education of Businesses

On April 20th, the experimental launch of Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, took place. This rocket is intended to return humans to the moon and possibly to Mars. The launch was followed live by millions of people and received extensive media coverage. Just minutes after liftoff, the rocket lost control and was made to explode. In the now long history of space flights, this was not the first unsuccessful launch. So, there should be no surprise, except for that right after the explosion, the employees of SpaceX, the company founded by Elon Musk, reacted with a long applause. The images ...

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2023-07-21 Donato Masciandaro

Dangerous Liaisons: Digital Bank, Social Networks, and Financial Instability

Being constantly connected is harmful to the mind, common sense tells us. However, it can also be very harmful to the wallet, as suggested by what happened with the four recent bank failures: Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Signature Bank, First Republic Bank, and Credit Suisse. Three cases in America and one in Europe share a common lesson: regulation and oversight must be proactive. It is necessary to eliminate the possibility of conducting unlimited digital banking operations in terms of time or amount and to be very cautious about the rules for introducing the digital Euro. A couple of months after ...

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2023-06-05

In China It’s Full (Demographic) Winter

China has aged before becoming wealthy. A lengthy reportage by the Financial Times from Rudong, the county with the highest percentage of elderly people,[1] describes well the demographic nightmare that the People's Republic is facing. In the late 1960s, it was so populous that it was chosen as a pilot area for the one-child policy; today, sixty years later, nearly 40% of its inhabitants are over sixty years old. As a result, schools are closing, existing factories struggle to find workers, and the majority of the population lives on rather meager pensions. In Rudong, the percentage of elderly ...

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2023-05-31

The War of Talents and the Challenge of Skilled Immigration in Europe

Despite not capturing media attention, the increasingly urgent need for skilled immigration in Italy and Europe has been the focus of numerous analyses carried out over the years by both national and international institutions. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has been particularly active on this front, publishing several reports as part of the series entitled “Recruiting immigrant workers.” The OECD is an international organization for economic studies consisting of member countries (including Italy) that share the common characteristics of being developed ...

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2023-05-22

Built-to-Rent as a Solution for the Next (Re)Generation

Built-to-Rent. The analysis of the reference context, the new demands of the market in terms of flexibility arising from the labor market, the need to make housing accessible, and the necessary respect for parameters of well-being to be guaranteed for end users, outline the emerging need for a rental housing offer, supported by services for persons and places, capable of creating economic, social, and environmental value, including positive externalities for local communities. The domestic market is characterized by: a) Urban planning/construction regulations; b) Legislation concerning rental ...

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2023-04-26 Cecilia Attanasio Ghezzi

China's Rise (also) Depends on Diplomacy

"Chinese Diplomacy Warms Up," headlines one of the most recent issues of Caixin, the most respected economic weekly magazine in China.[1] Since the (so far failed) attempt to accredit itself as a mediator in the peace process between Russia and Ukraine on February 24, there has been a lot of activity in Beijing, with visits from several leaders. From our point of view, the most important visit began on April 5 when the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Beijing for a three-day official visit. Their intention was to demonstrate ...

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2023-04-20 Fabrizio Perretti

Poor but ... poor

Dino Risi's famous film “Poveri ma belli” (“Poor but beautiful”) was made in 1956. Two more would follow[1], thus composing a trilogy in which poverty is explicitly referred to in the titles, but is associated - unlike neorealist cinema - with the genre of comedy. Italy in the 1950s is a poor country that has just emerged from the devastation and material destruction of World War II. The 1953 parliamentary survey had indicated that "on average, families in a state of misery would turn out to be 1,357,000, or 11.8 percent of the total; and those in a poor condition 1,345,000, or 11.6 percent. ...

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2023-04-18 Donato Masciandaro

Swedish Lessons for the ECB

A good central bank is one that is understood; if it is also credible, it becomes excellent. A bad central bank is one that must be interpreted; if it also creates macroeconomic damage, it becomes terrible. From this point of view, in February the ECB took a step forward, unfortunately taking two steps back in March. Let's start with February. How to judge what the ECB did and said, also through the words of President Lagarde? Economic analysis allows us to make the question more precise: what have we understood about the reaction function of the ECB? The concept of a reaction function is what ...

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