Seminars, conferences and networks
The Directorate General for Economic for Economics Statistics and Research organizes invited-speaker seminars, typically two to three times a week, with presenters mostly coming from the world's leading universities, international organizations and other central banks and the seminars range across a large set of topics.
In addition to the official seminar series, mostly dedicated to external speakers, we also hold a regular lunchtime seminar series, in which Bank's economists present their work at the early stages.
The Bank is an institutional member of a large number of academic and policy networks and associations and regularly organizes conferences and workshops, also in cooperation with these institutions and other central banks.
Some of these events have become regular appointments for the scientific community, for example:
- the Bank of Italy-CEPR Labour workshop;
- the Joint Bank of Italy - CEPR - EIEF Workshop on Firm dynamics, innovation and growth;
- the Joint Banca d'Italia-Bocconi University Conference on Financial Stability and Regulation;
- the Bank of Italy - CEPR Money, banking and finance.
The Directorate General has a particularly close relationship with the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF), a Rome-based centre founded by the Bank to foster world-class academic research. EIEF is about a 20-minute walk from the Bank's headquarters. Economists of the two institutions attend both institutions' seminar series and routinely organize joint seminars and conferences. We also have in place a programme of visiting scholarships, a short period of leave that allows researchers to focus on and finalize ongoing research projects of high academic potential. In normal years, about a dozen of our economists spend a period, of up to four months, at EIEF as visiting scholars.
Training, secondments and study visits
Training programmes are at the heart of the life-long learning process, consequently employees at the Directorate General routinely participate in training courses at universities, research centres and other central banks. These include summer courses organized, for example, by UPF-CREI, CEMFI, the Bank of England Centre for Central Banking Studies-CCBS, and the Euro Area Business Cycle Network.
The Bank also organizes short training courses on recent developments in academic research and methodologies, hosting leading international scholars. For example, over the past few years we welcomed Benjamin Moll (LSE) who dealt with heterogeneous agents macro models, Aysegul Sahin (University Austin Texas) on flow models of the labour markets, Matteo Maggiori (Stanford University) on the International Monetary System, Ufuk Akcigit (University of Chicago) on Firm Dynamics and Economic Growth, Pol Antràs (Harvard University) on global sourcing and multinational activity, Benoit Mojon (Bank of International Settlement) on inequality and on the greening of financial porfolios, and Jeff Wooldridge (Michigan State University) on difference-in-differences methods. Among many renowned speakers, three Nobel Prizes, Esther Duflo (MIT), Lars Hansen (University of Chicago) and David Card (Berkeley) held one-hour lectures on their prominent research topics.
Research-exchange programmes and secondments with the ECB and other European national central banks are common and come in many forms. A specifically designed programme, the External Working Experience (EWE), facilitates exchanges within the European System of Central Banks and economists from the Directorate General routinely participate in this programme.
Exchanges with other international organizations, such as the OECD, the EC, the IMF, the BIS and the World Bank, are frequent.
After a few years of service, economists can spend a period of several months up to an academic year as visitors at the world's top-ranked academic institutions, fully funded by the Bank. During this period, economists are exempt from policy work and can fully concentrate on their research and coursework.
Data sources, IT and the library
Research at the Bank of Italy has a strong empirical component, also benefitting from the Bank's traditional leading role in designing and administering household and firm surveys.
A large number of micro-level databases are available. These include the many surveys conducted by the Bank (e.g. the Survey on Household Income and Wealth, launched in 1964; the Survey of Industrial and Service Firms, a survey of medium-sized and large firms, launched in 1984; surveys on inflation expectations, credit conditions), and proprietary and confidential databases on financial intermediaries (e.g., the Italian Central Credit Register, Bank Supervisory Reports, and the Central Business Register).
The Bank's Research Data Center manages access to these sources and to external datasets such as those produced by Istat (the Italian National Institute of Statistics) and Eurostat, in full compliance with confidentiality requirements. A list of the available sources is available at https://www.bancaditalia.it/statistiche/basi-dati/rdc/index.html.
The Bank's IT facilities make it possible to exploit high-level, powerful clustering for heavy computational needs. High-quality assistance with algorithm-related questions, as well as any other IT issue, is available from the IT Support Unit.
The Bank of Italy's Library, established in 1894, specializes in banking, finance and economics. It also owns many rare and valuable editions of historically important works such as the first printed edition of Luca Pacioli's 'Summa de Arithmetica' (1494), a first edition of Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations' (1776), two 16th-century commentaries on Dante's 'Divine Comedy' and a third edition of the 18th-century 'Encyclopédie' by Diderot and D'Alembert.
