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Alberto Grando

The glass half full of Italian innovation

One of the key recommendations highlighted in the Report on the Future of European Competitiveness (Draghi, 2024) stresses the need to “bridge the innovation gap,” particularly with respect to the United States. The report notes that “in Europe, innovative digital firms are unable to scale or attract financing, resulting in a significant gap in later-stage investment between the EU and the United ...

Gianmarco Ottaviano

From the “horizontal frontier” to the “vertical frontier”: american geoeconomics goes into orbit

In the European public debate, when space is discussed, the tone often still oscillates between the epic of conquest and the rhetoric of scientific cooperation. In the United States, by contrast, space has become something far more prosaic and, at the same time, far more strategic: a natural extension of industrial policy and national economic security. At the beginning of 2026, the question of whether ...

Donato Masciandaro

Trump and the Monroe Doctrine 2.0: between political dominance and monetary instability

“The Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we've superseded it by a lot, by a real lot. They now call it the Donroe doctrine.” These were Donald Trump’s words, spoken just hours after the Maduro operation in Venezuela. Leaving aside yet another demonstration that modesty is hardly the defining virtue of the current occupant of the White House, what does this mean? In December 1823, President Monroe, ...

Enrico Della Gatta

Why defence has become a key sector for the markets

For a long time, defence was perceived almost exclusively as a state cost, and in certain cultural circles even as an unproductive expense, a taboo to be confined to the margins of public and economic debate. Yet the defence of the community has always represented a pillar of society: it reflects collective fears and priorities, but above all the ability to organize resources and technologies in the ...

Gianmarco Ottaviano

Digital trade: who sets the rules in the absence of a global agreement?

The Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization is the summit that periodically brings together the trade ministers of member countries and represents the institution’s highest decision-making body. The latest took place at the end of March in Yaoundé, in Cameroon, and marked something more than a negotiating impasse. Among the central dossiers was the so-called moratorium on customs ...

Donato Masciandaro

Banks: yes to simplification, no to deregulation

“Caesar I was”, and “from within the laws I drew out the excess and the vain ”. Thus does the Supreme Poet had Emperor Justinian speak, suggesting the compass that should guide the Union in reforming banking regulation and supervision: simplification. It is a suggestion that the finance ministers of the European Union have decided to heed. Economic analysis confirms that simplification would ...

Angelo Cavallo, Federico Frattini, Tommaso Canonici

Persistent growth: why expanding is no longer enough

A recent scientific study shows that only 15% of the companies that exhibited high growth in 1985 were able to sustain it for at least thirty years. McKinsey reached the same conclusion in a study examining the performance of the world’s 5,000 largest companies. In particular, the study found that the median corporate growth rate was 2.8% (considering the ten years prior to Covid), and that only ...

Andrea Beltratti, Alessia Bezzecchi

AI, the market, and the value of possible worlds

The high valuations of AI stocks are fueling debate over a possible new technology bubble. A few figures explain why. In 2026, Nvidia surpassed a market capitalization of $5 trillion, while the U.S. semiconductor sector posted gains of more than 100% over the past year. The U.S. market is trading at multiples that are very high by historical standards: the S&P 500’s Shiller P/E has risen above 40, ...

Magazine article (E&M - 2019/3) Pintaldi Federica, Rapiti Fabio

Ten Years of Changes in the World of Work

In the last decade the Italian labor market has gone through substantial transformations, from the structure of employment, to the professional composition of the population, to the living conditions of workers, have been determined by the intersection of cyclical and structural factors: the great economic crisis, the gradual shift of production towards services, and long-term socio-demographic trends. In ...

Magazine article (E&M - 2019/3) Marrone Marco

The Good and the Bad of the Gig Economy

Technological innovation is producing epochal transformations in the economy, not only making heretofore unthinkable organizational scenarios possible, but increasingly affecting society, conditioning the way people work and consume. The evident aspect of these transformations is the rapid multiplication of commonly used terms – such as gig , sharing , or platform – that have enriched the vocabulary ...