Alberto Locarno

Alberto Locarno

Head of the Market Operations Directorate

He was born in Carrara on May 17, 1963.

He studied economics at the University 'La Sapienza' in Rome, where he graduated with honors in 1988. He continued his studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he obtained a Master's degree in Economics (with distinction) and later a PhD, with a dissertation on 'Learning, Monetary Policy and Asset Prices'.

In 1993, he joined the Research Department and was assigned to the Econometric Research Office, which he headed starting in 2002. There, he worked on the development and updating of the quarterly econometric model used by Banca d'Italia for macroeconomic forecasting and economic policy analysis. In 2007, following the reorganization of the Research Department, he became Deputy Head of the Models and Forecasting Division, and in 2012 he was appointed Head of the Division. In July 2025, he was appointed Head of the Market Operations Department, after serving nearly five years as Deputy Head.

He has taken part in working groups organized by the Bank for International Settlements (to estimate the impact on GDP of increased capital requirements for banks and globally systemically important financial institutions), and the Ministry of Economy and Finance (to assess the effects of measures supporting employment and aggregate demand). Since the launch of the Monetary Union, he has represented Banca d'Italia in Eurosystem working groups and committees. From 2012 and for nearly a decade, he participated - first as substitute and later as member - in the activities of the Monetary Policy Committee. Since 2020, he has been a member of the Market Operations Committee.

He is the author of scholarly works on the Italian labour market, Eurosystem monetary policy, and the macroeconomic effects of unanchored inflation expectations. He has published articles describing the structure and properties of Banca d'Italia's quarterly econometric model. He contributed to the work on the ECB's monetary policy strategy review in 2020-21. For a partial list of his publications, see: https://ideas.repec.org/e/plo118.html.