Atop one of Boston's most beautiful hills, Chestnut Hill, there is a university founded almost one and a half centuries ago by Jesuits--Boston College--its brownstone buildings covered in this season by New England's coat of snow.
Last year, the department of economics had three job openings. The jobs went to three Italian economists, or, more precisely, to three Italian female economists. Their recruitment brought the number of Italian professors to six, out of a total of 26. "We are thinking of making Italian the second official language of the department", jokes Fabio Schiantarelli, the veteran of the Italian contingent, at Boston College since 1992 who specializes in macroeconomics and applied econometrics.
When in Italy one talks about the "brain drain", the tendency is to think of scientists, medical doctors, biologists and physicists. "I don't know if economists ever managed to fully deserve the label of scientists--says Luigi Zingales, one of the most accomplished Italian economists in the United States--but at the very least they fall within the 'brains' category. And there is no doubt that we are witnessing a drain of Italian economists." Almost all Italian economists in the U.S. received their Bachelors in Italy ("therefore a great part of their human capital was formed there", emphasizes Schiantarelli), and then a Ph.D. in the U.S., never to return. Why is that?
The case of Raffaella Giacomini, from central Italy, two Bachelors in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Bologna, who is one of the three new recruits of Boston College, is representative. "In Italy"--she says--"I didn't receive any particular encouragement. After obtaining--in a somewhat casual way--a post-graduate scholarship, I opted for the University of California, San Diego, where I knew there was an important center for the study of econometrics, my field of research." Already in her second year of Ph.D. at San Diego, Giacomini wrote a paper with Clive Granger, who last year won the Nobel Prize for Economics. "The responsibilities that you have from the beginning and the involvement in research at the highest levels"--she argues--"are the unrivaled elements of the American system. The other is the highly organized job market, which allows you to find a job even before completing your Ph.D.".
Like Raffaella Giacomini, the other Italians at Boston College (with the exception of Fabio Schiantarelli) are all young, a fact that may lead one to think that the brain drain of economists is becoming more pronounced.
Boston College, which in the U.S. rankings of Economics departments figures around the 40th place [Note of Translator: the precise number in the Dusansky and Vernon (1998) was 35 for the period 1990-1994, and is now 24 for the period 1996-2000: see Combes and Linnemer (2003)], is such an interesting case that Alberto Alesina, the Chair of the Economics Department at Harvard, took it as an example at the recent opening of the academic year at Bocconi University in Milan (of which Alesina himself is a graduate), during a polemical address that painted a merciless portrait of the state of research in Italian economics departments. Whereas in the economics department at Boston College the average number of publications in refereed journals per professor is around thirty, in the recent Italian national competitions for faculty positions in Economics the average number of publications in international journals by not only the candidates, but the committee members as well, didn't reach 2, and was only 3 when including Italian journals.
Boston, with its many centers of research excellence, is a natural magnet for Italian talents in Economics. Beside the six at Boston College, there are two at Boston University, two at Harvard, one at Wellesley and one at the Federal Reserve, and two more at Boston College Business School and one at Harvard Business School. MIT, because of Franco Modigliani, has been for forty years the beacon for Italian economists crossing the Atlantic. The joint Harvard-MIT seminars are legendary in many sub-fields of Economics and "those alone are enough to make it worth being in Boston", says Giacomini.
Exploring the frontiers of research is the first reason cited by Zingales for why many Italian economists choose to remain in the U.S. after completing their Ph.D.'s. "The incentive to produce research is extremely strong"--argues the Chicago professor--"as well as the stimulating colleagues, the critical mass of cutting-edge research, the ease in hiring young researchers without having to face the hurdles of bureaucracy. And after doing a Ph.D. here, as well as perhaps a few years of subsequent work experience, it becomes difficult to go back to a rigid job market like the Italian one. The real problem is how to encourage the transition between the Ph.D and the return". In Italy, instead, recruitment tend to promote internal candidates and the flat pay scale does not reward productivity, when not directly favoring consulting at the expenses of research.
Many other Italian economists are scattered around the U.S. and, increasingly, Europe. "What should worry Italy"--argues Zingales--"is the rising emigration towards not only the U.S., but also other European research centers, no longer solely in England, but in places like Barcelona and Stockholm". According to the economist, Italy should put its efforts in creating one or two big centers for research excellence, and let the remaining economics departments focus on teaching. "In the U.S."--he says--"there are very serious teaching colleges that do only that and that have a positive function: it would be beneficial in Italy as well, where the percentage of graduates remains low". Several Italian economists cite the IGIER center at Bocconi University, as a praise-worthy, but not fully successful, attempt to encourage the re-entry of brains. On the other hand, a recent study on the quality of research at Bocconi, commissioned by the Italian university itself to a group of foreign experts guided by Roland Benabou from MIT, resulted in a less than flattering report. It is therefore hardly surprising that most of its best students, along with those from other Italian universities, continue to choose the American road.
by Alessandro Merli