In recent years, spending reviews have been talked about and written a lot in Italy, even if the results have been far lower than the expectations and needs of our country. The Centro Studi Impresa Lavoro, aware of the seriousness of the problem, has decided to publish "La Buona Spesa", an operational guide prepared by Giuseppe Pennisi (president of the scientific committee of the study centre) and Stefano Maiolo (member of the evaluation and verification unit of public investments of the Lazio Region) with the aim of disseminating public expenditure evaluation methods in simple and accessible language to all interested parties.
La Buona Spesa is not a new technical manual for evaluating public spending, but a working tool that can be used by all Italians - and in particular by managers and officials of public administrations - to understand which is the best method to conduct an effective spending review. The volume, posted on Amazon in paper and digital versions, it takes into account the most advanced methods and techniques for the evaluation of public works and is the result of over thirty years of research and applications in the specific subjects of evaluation. But it is also the result of 10 years of courses in these fields held at the Higher School of Public Administration (Sspa), regional training institutes, Italian and foreign universities, as well as the management or participation in evaluation units and in the activities of independent evaluators on behalf of entities such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the European Commission.
The authors.
Joseph Pennisi. Born in Rome in 1942, he had a first career in the USA (World Bank) until the mid-XNUMXs. Back in Italy he was general manager at the Ministries of Budget and Labor and Professor of Economics at the Bologna Center of John Hopkins University and Sspa, of which he coordinated the economic program. A frequent contributor to newspapers and periodicals, he currently writes regularly for Avvenire. He is a councilor of the Cnel. He has published about twenty books on economics and finance in Italy, the USA, Great Britain and Germany.
Stephen Maiolo. Economist, member of the Investment Evaluation and Verification Unit of the Lazio Region, PhD in Banking and Finance at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, where he teaches evaluation methods in economics in the masters. He is the author of publications on: formulation of projects, plans and programmes, investment evaluation, public-private partnership, shadow pricing.
