Enrico Giovannini

Enrico Giovannini (Rome, June 6th 1957) Italian economist and statistician. Since January 2001 he is Director of Statistics and Chief Statistician of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Since 2002 he is also full professor of economic statistics at the Rome University “Tor Vergata”.

Biography

He graduated in March 1981 in Economics at “La Sapienza” University of Rome and he continued his studies at the Institute of Economic Policy of the same Faculty, specialising in econometric analysis.

In December 1982 he was employed by the National Institute of Statistics (Istat), assigned first at the “Study Service” and later at the “National Accounting Service” where he performed several tasks, taking care of the Italian economic short-term dynamic study and participating in several projects of research.

He was a consultant of the Ministry of Treasury (on behalf of which, he took care of the construction of two econometric models) and of the Italian Manufacturers’ Association for the development of its econometric model. In December 1989 he became research director at the National Institute for Short-term Economic Analysis, where he took care, particularly, of monetary and financial analyses. In January 1992 he moved to National Institute of Statistics (Istat), where he was in charge of the Service for Econometric Studies. He was also in charge of the creation of the first two versions of the “Istat Annual Report” (1992 and 1993).

From December 1993 to May 1997 he was head of the “National Accounting and Economic Analysis” Department; from September 1994 to December 1995 he was head ad interim of the “Dissemination and Data Bank” Department. In December 1996 he was appointed Central Director of the Statistics on Institutions and Enterprises.

He is member of several high-level committees of the European Commission and other International Organisations. During his career, he took part in the Council of the Interuniversity Committee for Econometrics (CIDE) and of the Council of the Italian Statistical Society. He was member of the strategic Committee for the introduction of the EURO in Italy of the Ministry of Treasury and of several scientific Committees at Italian universities and research institutes.

Under his direction started in 2001, the OECD took up a complete reform of its statistical system; it also developed a new statistical information system in order to share the data with other international institutions (UN, IMF, UNESCO, etc) and it deeply renewed its products. In 2004 he organised the "Statistics, Knowledge and Policy OECD World Forum on Key Indicators" in Palermo and then he launched a global research project about "Measuring and Fostering the Progress of Societies" in co-operation with the European Commission, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the World Bank and the UN.

He is now organising the second OECD World Forum on "Measuring and Fostering the Progress of Societies", which will be held in Istanbul (Turkey) on 27-30 June 2007, with the participation of more than 900 experts, representing more than 100 countries and 20 international organisations.