The Coronavirus outbreak produced dramatic effects in a wide range of markets, leading to the worst economic recession since the Second World War. In this context, new policy options seemed to emerge, marking a significant shift from the beliefs that dominated during the last decades.

The USA have recently launched the American Jobs Plan, which starts from the consideration that “public domestic investment as a share of the economy has fallen by more than 40% since the 1960s” and, as a consequence, is strongly focused on the renewal, revitalization and rebuilding of infrastructures and transit systems, at the same time pursuing the goals of a new electric grid and the provision of high-speed broadband to all Americans. At the European level, the EU Member States have recently drafted their Recovery and Resilience National Plans, which have to enable what the European Commission defines as “twin transitions: green and digital”, exploiting the possibilities of a fiscal “whatever it takes” suggested by the former ECB President (Gasperin, 2020; Draghi, 2020).

Against this backdrop, the webinar will try to stimulate a debate and provide an answer to the following two main issues and questions:

i) which way the green and digital transitions actually interplay with each other? What are the main projects which will be funded by the expected direct public investments, both at the EU and the US level?

ii) what are the features of the apparent shift from purely “market-based” solutions to a more significant role of State intervention in addressing environmental challenges? Is such a shift temporary or is it bound to be permanent?

Speakers

THEODORA DRYER, AI Now Institute & New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering
Theodora Dryer is the Lead Research Scholar for Climate + Water at the AI Now Institute and research assistant professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering.
Her policy work and historical research focuses on the critically important domains of climate change, water policy, and agricultural technology (ag tech). The core commitment of her research is to confront environmental racism and climate injustice as they are mediated through data, algorithms, and digital and analog technology more broadly.
She holds a combined PhD in History and STS (Science, Technology, and Society) from the University of California, San Diego. Before her doctoral program, she trained in philosophy of physics, focusing on {uncertainty} and {indeterminacy} in relativity theory and quantum mechanics. She then worked as a science writer for a number of years with algorithmic designers from MIT that catalyzed her own critical inquiry into our rapidly changing information society. Over the last decade, she has researched the historical, political, and policy dimensions of algorithmic computing in local, environmental, and transnational contexts. She seeks after the root political systems, data architectures, and technologies at work in {computing landscapes} in order to clarify their broader impacts on the environment and human life.

JAMES K. GALBRAITH, The University of Texas at Austin
James K. Galbraith holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and a professorship in government at The University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Galbraith was executive director of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress in the early 1980s. He chaired the board of Economists for Peace and Security (1996–2016) and directs the University of Texas Inequality Project. He is a managing editor of Structural Change and Economic Dynamics.
From 1993 to 1997, he served as chief technical adviser to China's State Planning Commission for macroeconomic reform, and in 2016 he advised the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). In 2014 he was co-winner, with Angus Deaton, of the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economics. He holds honorary degrees from the Université Pierre Mendes-France in Grenoble and from the Plekhanov University of Economics in Moscow.
Dr. Galbraith's books include Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice: The Destruction of Greece and the Future of Europe (2016); Inequality: What Everyone Needs to Know (2016); The End of Normal: The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth (2014); Inequality and Instability: A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis (2012); The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too (2008); Unbearable Cost: Bush, Greenspan, and the Economics of Empire (2006); Inequality and Industrial Change: A Global View (with M. Berner) (2001); Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay (1998); Macroeconomics (with W. Darity Jr.) (1992); and Balancing Acts: Technology, Finance and the American Future (1989).

PHOEBE KOUNDOURI, Athens University of Economics and Business
Phoebe Koundouri is a world-renowned environmental economics professor and global leader in sustainable development. She is widely recognized as a pioneer in innovative, human-centric, interdisciplinary systems for the sustainable interaction between nature, society, and the economy. She is listed in the most-cited women economists in the world, with 15 published books and more than 450 published peer reviewed scientific papers, book chapters and reports. She is elected member of the World Academy of Art & Science, President-elect of the European Association of Environmental and Natural Resource Economists and she has received numerous international awards for academic excellence, including the prestigious European Research Council Synergy Grant (2020). With 100 European/Global research projects/initiatives and a team of 150 researchers, her work defines global policies and supports human well-being across the globe. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and has taught at Cambridge, UCL, LSE, Reading University. Since 2006 she is professor at the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB), founder/director of the ReSEES Research Laboratory (AUEB), the Sustainable Development Unit (ATHENA Informatics Research and Innovation Center) and the Climate-KIC HUB Greece of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. She chairs the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network - Europe, the International Center for Research ICRE8 and the SAB of European Forest Institute. She is a commissioner of the global COVID-19 Lancet Commission, member of the Pissaridis Commission (10 year Greek Development Plan) and of the National Climate Change Committee of Greece, and an advisor to the EU, the World Bank, the UN, NATO, the WHO and other international organizations and governments worldwide.

Personal Website: https://phoebekoundouri.org/

SANDRA PARTHIE, German Economic Institute (IW Köln)
Sandra Parthie is the Head of Brussels Office/ Head of European Affairs of the German Economic Institute (IW Köln). Sandra studied political sciences and economics at the Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany and the Université de Montréal, Canada. 
From 2006-2011 she was the head of office and political advisor to a German Member of the European Parliament and Chair of the Environment Committee. Her work focus was on environment, climate and energy policy. In 2011 she joined French-multinational company Alstom as the Director for EU Regulatory Affairs, with a focus on renewable energies and grid technology. 
Since March 2015 she is running the Brussels Liaison office for private German economic think tank ‘IW’ (Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft/ German Economic Institute), presenting economic research by the Institute to stakeholders in Brussels, predominantly on topics such as EMU, trade policy, structural and digital change, financial and energy policy.  
Since September 2020 she is a member of the European Economic and Social Committee and currently the EESC rapporteur on the EU Industrial Policy Strategy.

Working language: English

Partecipation is free upon registration.

For further info please contact info@turinschool.eu