Back the Trento Economy Festival and it does it in style: after last year's postponement (and downsizing in streaming) due to Covid, the 16th edition of the review directed by Tito Boeri returns to the public for the most part and will take place from 3 to 6 June. Never like this time will the event have a strong international dimension, enhanced by the presence of 5 Nobel prizes: not only Michael Kremer, Nobel Prize for Economics in 2019, who will open the event with a lectio magistralis dedicated to the economy of vaccines , but also Paul Milgrom, Joseph Stiglitz, Michael Spence, Jean Tirole, as well as the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund Gita Gopinath, the French Thomas Piketty, Philippe Aghion and Olivier Blanchard, and Mark Carney. The title of this edition is “The return of the state, businesses, communities, institutions”, therefore everything will revolve around Covid, how important the role of the public has been in tackling the pandemic and how the restart will be organised.
The various guests will therefore discuss how to deal with an absolutely unprecedented scenario within which new interactions have developed between public administrations and democratic institutions, between technostructure and politics, between society and the state. The program is very large: it starts on Thursday 3 June with the inauguration and the intervention of Kremer, then in the following days, in addition to the experts mentioned above, representatives of the institutions, of the academic world, some ministers of the Draghi government (Vittorio Colao and Roberto Cingolani are also expected), intellectuals such as Giulio Sapelli and labor experts such as Marco Bentivogli. Also speaking were former premier Romano Prodi and the governor of the Bank of Italy Ignazio Visco.
“The end of the pandemic – writes scientific director Tito Boeri in presenting the Festival – can be an opportunity to redraw the borders of the state, strengthen its presence where there is a greater need for it, planning its retreat elsewhere. What the public sector must do for its own citizens and what instead should be limited solely to regulating and leaving to private initiative? And how to treat the private individual who does not limit himself to pursuing his own individual or business interests, but who organizes himself in communities, in associations of the third sector, capable of dealing with the common good on an equal footing, if not better, than the public sector? The search for vaccines against Covid-19 has enjoyed strong public support. Without these funds it probably would not have been possible to burn time. It had never taken science less than 12 years to find a vaccine against viral pathogens”.
“In cases like these – continues Boeri -, where strong externalities are at stake, it is right that there is an entrepreneurial state that shares the business risks with the private sector. But what does all this have to do with those who are proposing a new IRI or the creation of state banks today? Even once the perimeter of public intervention has been redefined, it is good to ask ourselves how to make it more efficient in doing the things it should do. The pandemic has been a stress test very demanding for public administrations”.
