Francesco Grillo
Francesco Grillo is an Italian economist and manager.
Education and early career
After graduating in economics from LUISS Guido Carli,[1] he obtained an MBA from Boston University.[2] In 1995 he became an associate at McKinsey, where he applied tools typically used in multinational companies within other contexts, such as the evaluation of public policies.[3]
Having left McKinsey, Grillo founded consultancy firm Vision & Value[4] and think tank Vision.[5] Both companies focus research efforts on the effects of the Internet industrial revolution on businesses, cities, and governments.
In 2012, Grillo obtained a PhD[6] in "Political Economy" at London School of Economics and Political Science with a thesis on factors that enable growth across different regions in the new millennium.[7] Grillo's thesis contests the conventional hypothesis that greater R&D expenditure necessarily generates a more rapid growth of GDP.[8] While at Oxford Internet Institute and St Antony's College at University of Oxford and at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, Grillo continued this line of research along with one ranging from pensions[9] to regional development,[10] lines of research he has also popularized as a columnist for The Guardian, Il Messagero, Corriere della Sera, and Linkiesta. In Italy, he is a regular guest on news shows for RaiNews24, La7,[11] and SkyTG24.
Research
Grillo's research focuses on the so-called “innovation paradox",[12] first observed by Robert Solow in 1987.[13] Observing data available at the time, Solow observed how the rates of growth of GDP had decreased despite the exponential increase of the quantity of information accessible at any given moment. Grillo identifies the cause of the paradox in what he terms the “technological obsolescence” of liberal democracies.[14][15] To illustrate the reasons of the crisis, the economist traces a historical parallel between Internet and the invention of the press by Johannes Gutenberg: both media disintermediated the monopolistic reproduction of information. Since a redistribution of power tends to follow a reallocation of information, 21st Century liberal democracies are in crisis: they no longer possess the tools to govern Internet-triggered societal changes.
In comparing Western countries to China, Grillo notes that the Communist country has been more able to govern a technological revolution begun in the West. Meanwhile, Western countries have become more risk-averse,[16] thus widening the gap in terms of societal impact of technologies with China. While similar in some regards to Mariana Mazzucato's work on the Entrepreneurial State,[17] Grillo reflects more on the impact of the Internet on the form of the State itself. Through this comparison with China, Grillo proposes ways to give back to Western democracies the chance to use information to increase the efficiency and efficacy of government.[18]
Published works
- Democracy and Growth in the Twenty-first Century, Springer Nature, London, 2019[19]
- Lezioni Cinesi, Solferino Libri, Milan, 2019[20]
- Innovation, Democracy and Efficiency: Exploring the Innovation Puzzle within the European Union’s Regional Development Policies, Palgrave, London, 2016
- Public Investments in R&D as a Tool for Regional Economic Development (PhD thesis)[21]
- Merits, Problems and Paradoxes of Regional Innovation Policies, Local Economy Volume 26, Paragraphs 6–7, pp. 544–561[8]
Bibliography
- Abramovitz, M. (1986), Catching Up, Forging Ahead, and Falling Behind, in The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, Vol. 46, No. 2, The Tasks of Economic History, pp. 385–406
- Ahmad, N., Ribarsky, J., and Reinsdorf, M. (2017), Can Potential Mismeasurement of the Digital Economy Explain the Post-Crisis Slowdown in GDP and Productivity Growth?, in OECD Statistics Working Papers, No. 09, OECD Publishing, Paris
- Eggertsson, G. B., Mehrotra, N. R., and Summers, L. H. (2016), Secular Stagnation in the Open Economy, in American Economic Review, 106(5), pp. 503–507
- Gordon, R. J. (2016), The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War, Princeton University Press
- Landes D. S. (1969), The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present, Cambridge University Press
- Mazzucato, M. (2013), The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, Anthem Press, London
- Solow, R. (2005), Reflections on Growth Theory in Handbook of Economic Growth, in Aghion, P. and Durlauf, S. (Eds.), Elsevier, Amsterdam
- Yong-Hwan N. and Kyeongwon Y. (2008), Internet, Inequality, and Growth, in Journal of Policy Modeling, Vol. 30, Issue 6, 2008, pp. 1005–1016
References
- ^ "Francesco Grillo - CV" (PDF).
- ^ "Dr Francesco Grillo — Oxford Internet Institute". www.oii.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 2019-10-08.
- ^ "The McKinsey Mind".
- ^ "Francesco Grillo | The Guardian". the Guardian. Retrieved 2019-10-08.
- ^ "Author Page". openDemocracy. Retrieved 2019-10-08.
- ^ Grillo, Francesco (December 2011). Public investments in R&D as a tool for regional economic development: Under which circumstances do the European Union's Structural Funds investments on research achieve their objective to contribute to economic convergence of regions? (phd).
- ^ Zwolak, Jan (2016-06-27). "Innovative undertakings in the Polish industry". Zbornik Radova Ekonomskog Fakulteta u Rijeci: Časopis za Ekonomsku Teoriju i Praksu. 34 (1): 147–160. doi:10.18045/zbefri.2016.1.147.
- ^ a b Grillo, Francesco; Landabaso, Mikel (2011-09-01). "Merits, problems and paradoxes of regional innovation policies". Local Economy. 26 (6–7): 544–561. doi:10.1177/0269094211417161. ISSN 0269-0942. S2CID 154219621.
- ^ "Will Matteo Salvini wreck the euro?". The Economist. 11 July 2019.
- ^ "In Naples, the hit-men are children". The Economist. 22 June 2017.
- ^ Per l'economista Francesco Grillo il protezionismo è un suicidio per l'Italia (in Italian), retrieved 2019-09-26
- ^ Francesco Grillo e Raffaella Y. Nanetti, Innovation and democracy: the twin paradoxes, 31 luglio 2020, DOI:https://doi.org/10.1080/23792949.2020.1777880
- ^ Solow, Robert (July 12, 1987). "We'd Better Watch Out" (PDF). The New York Times.
- ^ Grillo, Francesco (2017-06-04). "Entrare nel corpo umano, la nuova sfida di Internet". Corriere della Sera (in Italian). Retrieved 2019-09-26.
- ^ "We need to look in a different direction to solve the current crisis of liberalism". openDemocracy. Retrieved 2019-09-26.
- ^ "Italy embraces Silvio, again and again". The Economist. 2008-04-17. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2019-09-26.
- ^ Stearman, Susannah. "Household investment in small businesses: securing our future through innovation, efficiency and sustainability" (PDF). Treasury Research Institute Essay Competition.
- ^ Nanetti, Raffaella Y.; Holguin, Catalina (2016-01-28). Social Capital in Development Planning: Linking the Actors. Springer. ISBN 9781137478016.
- ^ Grillo, Francesco; Nanetti, Raffaella Y. (2018). Democracy and Growth in the Twenty-first Century. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-02014-9. ISBN 978-3-030-02013-2.
- ^ "Lezioni cinesi - Francesco Grillo". Solferino Libri (in Italian). Retrieved 2019-09-26.
- ^ Grillo, Francesco (December 2011). Public investments in R&D as a tool for regional economic development: under which circumstances do the European Union's Structural Funds investments on research achieve their objective to contribute to economic convergence of regions? (phd thesis). The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
- Living people
- Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli alumni
- 20th-century Italian economists
- 21st-century Italian economists
- McKinsey & Company people
- Boston University alumni
- Italian expatriates in the United States
- Alumni of the London School of Economics
- Italian expatriates in the United Kingdom
- 20th-century Italian male writers
- 1965 births