Department of Excellence

Why we are a Department of Excellence

Today, the Department enrols more than 3500 students and employees, more than 115 tenured researchers and 25 members of the technical and administrative staff. It hosts more than 60 research fellows and more than 100 Junior researchers (PhD students and research scholars). Each year the Department welcomes about 20 visiting professors and visiting scholars, providing an international perspective for students and faculty members.

According to the 2023 QS World University Ranking by subject, the Department of Economics is one of the best Departments of Economics in Italy and at the international level it is indeed ranked in the Top 200 for Economics & Econometrics, in the Top 200 for Geography, in the Top 300 per Accounting & Finance, in the Top 350 for Law and in the Top 100 for Hospitality and Leisure Management.

The Department of Economics provides high quality research infrastructures, consistently with the most advanced international standards:

• the High Performance Computing calculation system
• the Laboratory of Experimental Economics
• the Bloomberg Finance Lab
• access to several databases.

These research infrastructures have been developed during the 2018-2022 Department of Excellence project, within the framework of activities of the VERA Centre, and they will be enhanced and consolidated in the next years.

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VIVA
Venice Initiative on Vulnerability Analysis

The specific aims of the project are the following:

1. Reinforce a multidisciplinary approach and the Department's mission as a reference point for the study, design, implementation, and evaluation of public policies, when facing issues related to social and economic systems in transition
2. Boost our research agenda by carrying out field experiments and randomized controlled trials, especially in the field of public policy
3. Increase the Department's ability to attract international staff
4. Start up and structure a constant interaction with the Department’s stakeholders and region, for a proactive sharing of requirements and responses.

The integration of research, teaching, and education will be reinforced by establishing a continuous collaborative process between the academia and public institutions, within different contexts.

Main project steps

Research

The aim of VIVA is to establish an integrated pathway to interdisciplinary research methods in the field of “vulnerability and transition”. The issues related to the vulnerability of social and economic systems in transition are highly relevant research topics. The concept of vulnerability should be defined considering the ongoing local, national and global transformations. In the past, the concept of social vulnerability used to design redistributive policies was based on dichotomous classifications – e.g. rich vs. poor, entrepreneurs vs. workers, producers vs consumers, more developed regions vs less developed regions. However, today’s global challenges and systemic crises (environmental, economic, demographic, health, etc.) should represent the unstable parameters to define and model social vulnerability and inequality.

VIVA will contribute to the study of tailored policies and regulation instruments able to provide responses to the emerging needs of social protection and to address the structural instability affecting individuals and social categories, such as exogenous shocks of extensive or global dimensions.

Field experiments carried out within the VIVA project

• Dissecting Individual Expectations on the macroeconomy (PI Francesco Lancia)
  Understanding how households respond to macroeconomic conditions is essential for designing welfare-enhancing policies. This project collects original survey data on household consumption from a representative population sample and links them to administrative records on assets and income. The combined data will allow us to examine whether, and how, individuals incorporate macroeconomic shocks into their expectations and how the change in beliefs shape their economic decisions.
• Gender equality in the labor market: the role of Artificial Intelligence (PI Valeria Maggian)
  The project aims to investigate, through a large-scale online experiment on a representative sample of the Italian population, whether and how men’s and women’s attitudes and abilities in the use of artificial intelligence (specifically ChatGPT) impacts on the gender gap in the labor market.
• What are the Causes of the Military Recruitment Crisis in the European Union? (PI Tatiana Celadin)
  The project aims to provide robust empirical evidence on the causes of the Military Recruitment crisis in the European Union. Through a discrete choice experiment, the preferences of European youth regarding different military and civilian employment opportunities will be analysed. The main objective is to estimate the elasticity of the military labor supply to monetary and non-monetary incentives to effectively inform the public debate and policy solutions.
• The Malleability of Social Preferences (PI Francesca Zantomio)
  Social preferences lead to numerous favourable outcomes at both the individual and aggregate levels, such as improved management of common-pool and personal resources, as well as a reduced risk of conflict. The project aims to study social preferences (such as altruism, aversion to inequality, trust and cooperation) and their development in the childhood, by carrying out incentivized experiments in Primary Schools.

Education

VIVA will be a place for developing innovative/experimental teaching activities for the training of economists on applied and quantitative research methods and for legal experts in public and private policies addressing vulnerability in several contexts within the European dimension.

Infrastructures

VIVA will be based on three main investments in research infrastructures:

1. Design and implementation of field experiments and randomized controlled trials
   Thanks to the VIVA project, the Department developed a new research line, the field experiments. This involved infrastructural investments for conducting large-scale surveys, database acquisition, and managing experimental activities. Four research projects have been developed.
2. Upgrade of the Department’s computing infrastructure
   The VIVA project has renovated and upgraded the Department calculation system High Performance Computing (HPC). At the moment the cluster includes 13 virtual machines running, 10 with Windows and 3 with Linux operating systems, for a total of 340 core and 3.4 TB RAM.
3. Access to specific databases
   In order to support the VIVA research and education infrastructure, the Department invested in the following licenses:
   1. Bloomberg licences in order to mantain a Bloomberg Finance Lab
   2. LSEG Workspace for Students with DataStream to support in particular research and educational activities related to ESG thematic area

Governance

Project coordination will be guaranteed by the following governance structure:

• Management Group articulated on the different areas and competencies of the project
• Coordinator for the planning, design and management of lab&field experiments and randomized trials within VIVA project
• Department Advisory Board for an independent advice on scientific research lines as well as suggestions on the identified actions and new development plans of VIVA project