Documents Pianta, Mario 13 results

"The coronavirus pandemic is bringing with it the prospect of severe financial and economic crises. The article investigates its economic consequences in terms of financial instability, economic recession, lower incomes and policy challenges at the national and European levels. What are some of the lessons that can be learned? This article argues that health is a global public good. Public health and welfare systems are crucial alternatives to the market and universal public health is a key element of an egalitarian policy."

"While it has long been apparent that global levels of wealth and income inequality have been steadily increasing since the 1970s, the issue received scant attention in Europe until the recent financial crisis and the resulting Great Recession illuminated for the general public just how great the chasm between the very rich and everybody else had grown. This realisation was coupled with an increased focus on inequality among economists and other academics, leading to a fresh drive for policy ideas to remedy the alarming trend. This Forum comprises a diverse range of viewpoints on the recent history and dynamics of inequality within Europe, each striving to define the root causes in the various countries being examined. The definition of these causes, of course, can inform the direction of policies aimed at alleviating the growing inequality in many European countries and thereby curtail one of the major political and social issues of our time."

"One lesson of the Great Recession has been that countries with higher shares of industry in their GDP seemed to be less affected by the crisis. Consequently, the call for an industrial renaissance has become stronger. Industrial policy has now become a top priority in countries where it was not explicitly considered in the past. A strong EU-wide industrial policy is expected to foster growth and job creation. However, cultivating industrial development is a complex challenge. This Forum addresses the steps that need to be taken to create a new European industrial policy. What are the structural challenges that need to be addressed? What are the instruments of the EU's industrial policy? And should the EU be engaged in picking winners, or is the market better at making such judgements?"

"This essay takes stock of the search for effectively integrating the analysis of technological change in economic theory, pointing out the need for bridging Schumpeterian and evolutionary perspectives on innovation with post-Keynesian approaches to growth and structural change. The challenge facing scholars in this field is to account for the diversity and complexity of technological change while addressing at the same time macroeconomic and structural dynamics, issues of demand and distribution. This challenge is addressed in various ways by the articles published in this special issue of Economics of Innovation and New Technologies and a summary of their contribution is provided in this opening article. They have in common an exploration on issues at the frontier of innovation research, attention to industry-level dynamics, novel – and widely different – methodological and modelling tools. The results of these articles are discussed in the light of the research trajectories investigating the two-way links between innovation and economic change."

Europe is facing the twin challenges of addressing climate change and reducing the centre-periphery divergence. The ‘European Green Deal' of the EU Commission includes larger climate change objectives, but with the same amount of EU resources and no clear vision on how to achieve aims. The lack of action for greater cohesion and convergence in economic performances is contributing to wider disparities within Europe, in particular with the countries and regions of Southern Europe. These challenges could be jointly understood as a need for deep changes in Europe's production systems, making them carbon-neutral and distributing more evenly economic activities in Europe's territory. A Green Industrial Policy for Europe could be the appropriate frame for developing a combined set of policies addressing such challenges."