About IGIER

Igier in a nutshell

Launched in 1990 as a joint initiative of Bocconi University, CEPR, and NBER, today IGIER is a dynamic and international research environment that fosters a community of scholars and a wide array of initiatives with the overarching goal of inspiring, nurturing, and disseminating rigorous empirical and theoretical research in all fields of economics. Its Affiliates and Fellows, who are Bocconi faculty in the four departments of Decision Sciences, Economics, Finance, and Public Policy, as well as visiting faculty and Bocconi MSc students, share ideas and develop research collaborations with a common methodological approach that rejects alike facts without theory and theory without facts.

About Igier

IGIER is committed to foster a community of scholars and a wide array of initiatives that inspire, nurture, and disseminate rigorous empirical and theoretical research in all fields of economics

Launched in 1990 as a project of Bocconi University, the CEPR and the NBER, today IGIER is a dynamic and international research environment in which Affiliates and Fellows, who are Bocconi faculty members in the four departments of Decision Sciences, Economics, Finance, and Public Policy, as well as visiting faculty and students, share ideas and develop research collaborations with a common methodological approach that rejects alike facts without theory and theory without facts.

Through its Visiting Students Initiative, IGIER supports an innovative program to mentor talented Bocconi MSc students and offers research and tutorial activities that will help them succeed in their professional or academic careers in Italy or abroad. To foster an international research community, IGIER organizes a lively Visiting Faculty program, as well as a seminar series, conferences, and other scientific events. IGIER promotes the dissemination of its scholars' research through a working paper series.

Accomplishments

Since its beginnings in the early 1990s, IGIER has contributed to attract to Italy a pool of talented economists from leading universities abroad, who are now Bocconi faculty members. The center is committed to help Bocconi fulfill the mission of hiring outstanding faculty from the very best research institutions worldwide.

IGIER fellows have been and are successful in winning competitive grants, including the prestigious ones awarded by the European Research Council (ERC) and the National Science Foundation in the United States. In fact, from 2008, 20 IGIER fellows have been awarded the ERC Starting, Consolidator or Advanced research grants. With this achievement, Bocconi belongs to the group of top institutions in Europe for the number of scholars who have been awarded ERC grants in the SH1 panel (Economics, Finance, and Management).

IGIER scholars include Fellows of the Econometric Society, past presidents and current council members of the European Economic Association, members of the editorial boards of leading journals in economics, recipients of prestigious honors and prizes, including the Jahnsson award by the European Economic Association (to the best economist in Europe under 45), the Alfred P. Sloan Research fellowship in the United States (to the best eight young economists), the Carlo Alberto Medal (to the best Italian economist under 40), and the Hicks-Tinbergen Medal to the author of an outstanding article published in the Journal of the European Economic Association.

IGIER scholars publish books with leading publishers and articles in leading academic journals. Its fellows are among the most highly cited scholars according to a variety of academic rankings.

A Brief History of IGIER

IGIER is the acronym for Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research. The research center was named in memory of Innocenzo Gasparini, former rector of Bocconi University, who encouraged young Italian economists to go and study abroad since the 1970s and 1980s.

In the winter of 1989, Francesco Giavazzi, Mario Monti, and Richard Portes agreed that the time was ripe for trying to attract back to Europe some of the young European economists who were building successful careers in America. They recognized that one of the main reasons behind the flight of young European economists was the absence of university research centers in Europe with "critical mass."

An early initiative in this direction had been the Castelgandolfo conferences, set up by Luigi Spaventa to provide a forum for discussing economic policy issues relevant not only to Italy, but also of more general interest. Many young European economists presented papers there.

The idea of an Italian research center was discussed further with William Branson and Stanley Fischer at a seminar at Princeton organized by the Ford Foundation in the following spring. These meetings, and other informal discussions, offered further encouragement to proceed.

In the summer of 1990, Bocconi University made local facilities available and awarded a start-up grant to support the project. The Commission of the European Community under the auspices of its SPES program provided an additional grant to finance fellowships. In the fall of 1990, the rector of Bocconi, the director of CEPR, and the president of NBER signed a letter of agreement describing the aims of the project and the responsibilities of the three institutions, and dedicating the new institute to the memory of Innocenzo Gasparini.

IGIER was inaugurated on November 26, 1990.
 

Governing Council, 2020-2024

Nicola Gennaioli, Director
Jordi Galì (CREI Pompeu Fabra), appointed by CEPR
Elhanan Helpman (Harvard University), appointed by NBER
Franco Peracchi (Università di Roma Tor Vergata), appointed by Università Bocconi
Roberto Perotti (Università Bocconi), appointed by Università Bocconi
Beatrice Weder di Mauro (University of Geneva), president of CEPR
James Poterba (MIT), President of NBER

IGIER's governance, 1990-2019