The project
On 10 January 2018 the Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) announced the list of the Italian Departments that have been assigned a five-year Research Grant (2018-2022) as "Department of Excellence". The grant is assigned for strengthening and enhancing research, with investments in human capital, infrastructures and qualified graduate programs.
The Department of Economics and Statistics is one of the 18 Italian departments financed in the fields of Economics, Business and Statistics. The selection was based on the results of the 2011-2014 Research Evalutation (VQR) and on the quality of a project evaluated by a National Commission established by MIUR.
For the five years 2018-22 the Department will receive a total funding of 6,075,000 euros that will be used to hire new researchers and post-docs, invest in advanced training at the doctoral and master level, and establish a Visiting Professors programme.
The project aims to strengthen research in the three areas in which the Department has already achieved significant results and international recognition, promoting studies in financial economics, applied microeconomics and economic theory.
The actions
- Recruitment. The recruitment of young researchers in the international job market is a priority of the project. Young researchers will have more solid career prospects, thanks to more tenure track positions and associate professorships.
- PhD in Economics. The project aims to attract high quality PhD students, allocating more human and financial resources to graduate teaching, and focusing the program on the three research areas of the project.
- Research quality. Researchers will be encouraged and incentivized to publish their work in top-level international journals, present them at international conferences, and apply to research grants.
- Visiting Professors. The project will activate an international exchange program, with the aim of developing joint research projects and increasing the international visibility and reputation of the Department.
The governance
- The Scientific Director is Tullio Jappelli, who manages the project on behalf of the Department, appoints and coordinates the managers of the individual projects, informs the Steering Committee about the progress of the project.
- The Project's Managers coordinate the PhD in Economics, the Master Degrees, the Job Market, the Post-doc Program, and the Visiting Professors Program.
- The Steering Committee monitors the projejct, the quality of the recruitment and the PhD program. It includes three members of the Department (Maria Gabriella Graziano, Tullio Jappelli, Marco Pagano) and three international researchers (Antonio Guarino, University College London; Luigi Pistaferri, Stanford University; Frank Riedel, Bielefeld University).