Fondazione Agnelli Supports Bocconi Research that Affects Business

THE AVVOCATO GIOVANNI AGNELLI ASSOCIATE PROFESSORSHIP IN ECONOMICS HAS BEEN ASSIGNED TO FRANCESCO DECAROLIS, A SCHOLAR WHO ANALYZES HOW MARKETS WORK AND DESIGNS INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS TO PROMOTE COMPETITION AND SOCIAL WELFARE

Francesco Decarolis is the new Avvocato Giovanni Agnelli Associate Professor in Economics. The occasion has been marked by a Lectio Inauguralis on competition and monopoly, attended by John Elkann, President of Fondazione Agnelli that finances the professorship.
 
In 2013, the Agnelli Foundation established a permanent professorship for an associate professor at Bocconi, the Avvocato Giovanni Agnelli Associate Professorship in Economics, to promote, on a rotating basis, young talents in economic research. Francesco Decarolis succeeds Chiara Fumagalli, the first holder of the professorship.
 
«We are proud to work with one of the best universities in Europe», said John Elkann. «The Associate Professorship in Economics, named after my grandfather, was born in the same logic that inspired Fondazione Agnelli's interventions in the field of education: to improve the school and university system in Italy, bringing it to the level of the most advanced countries in the world».
 
«By funding the professorship», said Gianmario Verona, Rector of Bocconi University, «the Fondazione Agnelli, a strategic partner of Bocconi, helps the University to attract the best talents in the field of scientific research and contributes to the advancement of applied economics studies on major issues affecting business. It was the formation of industrial groups in the case of Chiara Fumagalli, it is the safeguarding of competition through the design of well-functioning markets in the case of prof. Decarolis, who joins Bocconi from Boston University».
 
«In the last 30 years», Prof. Decarolis says, «microeconomics has been enriched by new methods to analyze data and link data to theoretical models of consumers’ demand and firms’ strategies. This allows us to better understand how markets work and how to design new rules in order to promote and preserve competition. Thanks to this approach, called “market design”, it is sometimes possible to single out the truly critical features of a market and plan innovative, surgical interventions, capable of enhancing social welfare».
 
Graduated in Economics from Bocconi in 2002, Francesco Decarolis received his PhD from the University of Chicago, where he studied auction markets with Nobel Prize winner Roger Myerson.  Associate professor at Bocconi since 2017, he is a member of the Economic Advisory Group Competition Policy of the European Commission - DG Comp. Decarolis' studies have contributed to the debate on the introduction of new market rules both in Italy (in the field of public procurement auctions) and in the United States (government-subsidized insurance markets).
 
The Avvocato Giovanni Agnelli Associate Professorship in Economics is to be assigned to a nationally and internationally renowned Bocconi University Associate Professor studying applied economics. The money donated by the Fondazione Agnelli flows into an endowment fund, whose yield finances research. 

by Fabio Todesco