Roundtable

Meeting in digital format

21 March 2022

The greater city: connected, attractive, sustainable

National

Fears of urban crisis stoked during the most difficult months of the pandemic have not borne fruit. Indeed, revived economic and social activities are rekindling the vitality of cities, yet the change due to significant lifestyle interruptions is inexorable. The need has emerged, first of all, to redistribute and reconfigure urban density: the de-synchronization of rhythms consequent to social distancing has eliminated rush-hour congestion and made public transportation more efficient.

Meeting in digital format

3 March 2022

Digital infrastructure and technology: innovation and sustainability

National

What was already an ongoing digital revolution accelerated with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, foregrounding it as a concern. Indeed, people in their daily lives and businesses have been inundated with digital-driven processes that are often taken for granted and in need of proper governance. As with all changes, the digital revolution is capable of generating unity and inclusion but can also divide and exclude. In that sense, the two principle perspectives from which to examine it are culture and infrastructure.

Meeting in digital format

31 January 2022

Challenges for Italy’s foremost industries: innovation and sustainability

National

Italy’s 2021 economic recovery, an excellent sign for the future, was led especially by domestic consumption and other segments such as construction that enjoyed the benefits of fiscal incentives, and thus offers a good point of departure for 2022. This despite national and global level threats that include increased energy and raw materials prices, the slowdown triggered by the fourth pandemic wave, and bureaucratic snags that could obstruct the timely manufacture and consignment of the machinery needed for the digital transition.

Meeting in digital format

28 February 2022

The energy we need: An intergenerational outlook

The European Union and its member states have been ramping up efforts over the past two years to combat climate change and decarbonize as many sectors as possible, from standpoints of both policy and the economy. The European Commission published its Green Deal in December 2019 and subsequent Fit-For-55 legislative package in July 2021, which set some very ambitious decarbonization goals. These included a 55% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (as compared with 1990 values) by the end of 2030 and complete carbon neutrality within the year 2050.

Meeting in digital format

5 April 2022

Corporate finance. The geopolitics of currencies and crypto-currency development

The dollar remains strong and, despite a few crises, is still the world’s preeminent reserve currency. The euro, on the other hand – although it does represent a solid and advanced economy – has not managed to become a reserve currency capable of replacing the dollar. The currency “multipolarism” now emerging – difficult to construct yet certainly inexorable – is going to include the phenomenon of cryptocurrencies. The trend is toward a multipolar system with one dollar/euro area and another consisting of many of those currencies currently located outside that area.

Meeting in digital format

3 November 2021

Digital markets and the real economy

Italian industry is compelled to face the prospect of a future digital market, along with the continuing paradigm shifts that technological transformation is imposing on the economic and social fabric. The radical transformation of manufacturing, consumption and habits is having a significant impact not only on daily activities but also on the capacity for near-future analysis and forecast.

Meeting in digital format

17 November 2021

The rise of the silver economy

Population ageing is a global trend affecting all the world’s foremost economies. The phenomenon is have an especially significant impact on China and Europe and seems destined, along with the climate crisis, to be among the main generators of change in twenty-first century societies. Governments, citizens and the business community thus find themselves facing a range of challenges as well as a host of opportunities.

Meeting in digital format

24 November 2021

Making the most of Italy’s energy resources

The focus of both the G20 in Rome in October and of the COP26 in Glasgow in November was the energy transition. Italy continues to be an active participant in a debate that sheds light on the fact that the transition is not only energy-related, but also an economic, financial, social and cultural one.

Meeting in digital format

22 November 2021

Space: The new frontier for economy and research

The history of human presence in space consists mainly of two phases. The first of these, more political – and in hindsight, military – in nature, was entirely in the hands of the United States given the high cost of investments. In the second phase, which spawned the “new space economy”, has reduced government participation and opened the doors to private interests eager to offer auxiliary services to institutional operators as well as to develop new activities.

Meeting in digital format

8 November 2021

Digital society: democracy, information, security

The relationship between information and power is not a new concern. Ancient Greek historian Polybius defined ochlocracy as the degeneration of democracy where the mob is led to believe it is free to exercise its prerogatives while instead becoming the active instrument of one or more groups. The exponential spread of interconnected actors has fed a considerable flow of web-channeled data, the appropriate use of which platforms are required to manage. This endeavor calls for an ability to differentiate between content that is legal and that which may constitute a violation.

Meeting in digital format

12 February 2021

The challenge for the young Italians in technological innovation

Although Italy continues to offer proof of excellence in a broad array of fields, there is still considerable margin for growth in younger generations’ understanding and application of technological advances. The current Covid-19 pandemic and the possibility of stemming its spread with the mRNA vaccine have further underscored the need to invest in research and innovation in the interests of creating social and economic value.

Meeting in digital format

8 June 2021

Creating Excellence

Creating excellence is one of Aspen Institute’s cardinal objectives, and one of the strategic factors in generating the country’s recovery. To this day, Italy remains an advanced European economy despite its relatively low percentage of university graduates. That percentage could be augmented through a different interpretation of education that embraced those hubs of excellence that flourish thanks to their ability to interface with the business world.

Meeting in digital format

30 June 2021

Territoriality and Health Policy

The pandemic has highlighted the fragility and disparities of a National Health Service already hard put to confront the combination of an ageing population and the growing incidence of chronic pathologies. As a result, the political agenda is now focused on striking a new balance between macro assistance levels (moreover, previously indicated in “fiscal federalism” reforms) and the proportioning of related standard costs.

Meeting in digital format

12 July 2021

Digital Platforms

The digital revolution has profoundly changed how goods and services are consumed by increasing their availability online, thereby enhancing the role of web platforms. Indeed, these latter have been an essential tool for extending political rights such as freedom of speech, and for framing new ones, especially within the economic sphere, such as consumer rights. At the same time, however, they have laid the groundwork for a concentration of overriding powers, and the abuse of those powers.

Meeting in digital format

21 May 2020

Government, finance and business team up on economic recovery and competitiveness

Italia ed Europa stanno provando a superare la fase dell’emergenza legata alla pandemia di coronavirus. Si tratta di un frangente delicato in cui gli Stati, le banche e le imprese devono lavorare insieme per lasciare alle spalle la crisi e costruire una “nuova normalità”. Se in questo momento la priorità è offrire liquidità alle imprese e gli strumenti messi in campo sono le moratorie, le garanzie pubbliche e il sostegno del canale bancario, nel futuro diventerà cruciale riparare ai danni creati dal virus e sostenere la capitalizzazione delle aziende.

Meeting in digital format

16 November 2020

Generational turnover in Italy

Business is the fundamental agent in the recovery of an economy struck as dramatically by the pandemic as Italy’s has been. To determine whether that recovery will be a success we need to consider the system’s economic armature of countless small and medium-sized family-run enterprises. Today’s generational hand-over becomes even more important than it has been over recent decades. At stake is the result of the major challenges awaiting national manufacturing: the digital transformation and the environmental transition.

Meeting in digital format

4 May 2020

A new start for post-pandemic tourism

The pandemic crisis now under way is only the latest chronologically since 9/11, the Arab Spring, the 2008 financial downturn and Brexit; not to mention climate change, which acts as a sort of umbrella for all recent emergencies.

Meeting in digital format

23 November 2020

Italy’s health system: finding a balance between emergencies and routine care

The Italian healthcare system continues to feel the pressure of the coronavirus pandemic. However, the outlay of financial and organizational resources needed to confront the emergency must not take the focus off the structural issues posed by the need to protect a steadily ageing population’s health. Instead, the pandemic should offer an opportunity to highlight existing shortcomings and create new models with which to confront a future return to normality.

Meeting in digital format

28 April 2020

Proposals for the future from Aspen Institute Italia Junior Fellows

The economic, social and geopolitical impact of Covid-19 presents challenges that, as they are confronted, will have significant, long-term consequences for the country’s future. In Italy, one of the nations most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, preexisting economic structural weaknesses make an effective response to the emergency not only strategic but especially difficult.

Meeting in digital format

9 November 2020

Building an interconnected society: infrastructure, investment, innovation and integration

The pandemic has had a considerable impact on lifestyles, both temporarily and longer term (structurally). Even after the arrival of an anti-coronavirus vaccine, an interconnected society is going to have to recuperate a good number of physical living spaces in order to get back to “normal”. That means fewer distance-based activities, some of which, however, are bound to remain useful and will tend to be employed more as we move forward than they were in pre-emergency times.