Friday, July 9, 2010

Are academics still dysfunctional in Italy?

Academics, at least in Economics, have been largely dysfunctional in Italy for a long time. With faculty positions centrally administrated by the Ministry of Education, competitions rigged against people coming from abroad, and newcomers have first to pay their time in the purgatory (the South or the islands), there have been very few incentives for quality people to stay or return to the country. Hence a very large diaspora of Italian economists throughout the world who even have organized themselves into a separate society to try to shake things up. Things have moved, a little bit, as universities have now more autonomy in hiring, and one can wonder whether this has done any good.

Adriano Birolo and Annalisa Rosselli provide an assessment of the quality of new hires into entry-level positions around 1985, 1995 and 2005. While the number of hires seems to have substantially increased, their quality does not seem to have. While they may publish more, they do so with substantially more co-authors. where there seems to be some change is in the topics of research. Italy has always had a very strong tradition in the history of economic thought, indeed a sixth of all publications were devoted to this in the 1980s, and this emphasis seems to dwindle to the advantage of Microeconomics, which was virtually absent. So at least in terms of research topics, Italy is becoming less of an oddball.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

History of Economic Thought OR Method(ology) => major frustrations and professional fail.

That being said, oh no, I have to go teach on a Mediterranean island! Put me out of my misery right now.

Vilfredo said...

Oh, every Italian who has had exposure to Economics outside of Italy has volumes to say about the inefficiencies in the system. It is also true that Italy has been giving abnormally large weight to HET, and heterodox economics I might add. Things are improving, but so slowly. It will take at least a generation to get the place in order.

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...
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French Chateau said...

yes, I do agree with Vilfredo. It is very true that Italy has been giving abnormally large weight to HET. Anyway, I l like to read this blog. Thanks for sharing.