Johan Galtung will open the 2012 Festival of Economics in Trento. The columnist of Unimondo (Oneworld-Italy), invited by the Training Centre for International Cooperation, will attend the meeting "An ecleptic alternative to hyper-capitalism", scheduled on Thursday 31 May at p.m. at Palazzo Geremia. The "alternative 1987 Nobel Peace Prize” will lead us towards an economy which reinforces our lives, showing us, as he says, what changes will be necessary so that economy can work for peace. Through reduction of direct, structural and cultural violence, together with the satisfaction of fundamental needs of all human beings, a contribution will be given for the construction of equal relationships, assuring, at the same time, a minimal impact from an ecological point of view. In short, he will represent once more the triptych "Peace, Development and Environment" as a sound answer to the main theme of the Festival: "Life cycles and intergenerational transfers". Have you marked it on your planner? That's OK.

Let's go next. Also this year the Festival will have a preview away from home. On 19 May it will move for a day to Bari, where there will be two meetings on the issue "Young people, creativity and firms". "The crisis - as Tito Boeri, scientific director of the event, writes - is bound to leave deep scars on generations which have found themselves, against their own will, to enter the working world in this juncture. Negative events often leave persistent marks in people behaviours, compromising their careers, their rhythms of life and time for shaping their families; they expose them to future risks of unemployment and have a bad effect on their health even many years later. The risk is that we could find ourselves with entire generations of losers, also because the crisis will leave us with a heavy inheritance of a high public debt, whose burdens will end up weighing down like a boulder on the generations which are now starting to work". The crucial issue of intergenerational transfers turns into the research of finding a system able to enhance longevity on one hand and, on the other, to offer young people new opportunities. In a word - continues Boeri - "the Big Recession and then the debt crisis have opened, not only in Italy, a big juvenile issue as well as a great elderly issue. The former ones have serious problems to enter the job market and start their life cycle. The latter ones find it hard to come to a peaceful close of cycle, due to serious cash-flow problems at the end of their existence".

At the Festival Nobel prizes are of the family. This year there will have three of them: Christopher Pissarides and Dale T. Mortensen, Nobel Prizes for Economics in 2010, who will explain the effects of recession on job market and Eric S. Maskin, Nobel Prize for Economics in 2007, who will show us the reason why we tend to drop relevant economic decisions in the lap of future generations. Many will be the guests who play a primary role on the international economic stage, such as Barry Eichengreen, among the top experts of  the world monetary system, Olivia S. Mitchell, among the top experts of pension and insurance system; Thomas Piketty, professor of Economy at the Paris School of Economics, among the top analysts of the interaction between economic development and income and wealth distribution; Adair Turner, Director of the United Kingdom Financial Services Authority, an economist who works on business, economic politics and university research.

Several of the participants are first-ranking actors of the national economic and political debate and will take part to some sessions. Among others: Susanna Camusso, CGIL (Trade Union) Secretary General, Corrado Clini, Minister of the Environment, Elsa Fornero, Minister of Labour and Social Politics, Corrado Passera, Minister of Economic Development, Infrastructures and Transports, Michel Martone, Vice-minister of Labour and Social Politics, Marco Rossi Doria and Elena Ugolini, Undersecretaries of the Minister of Education, University and Research.

As Boeri underlined, "there will be a lot of talk also about entry in the job market and training on workplace. Intergenerational informal pacts will also be examined as important issues in the field of non-self-sufficient persons, from parents who help their sons and daughters in taking care of grandchildren, especially in the absence of day nurseries, to children assisting their own parents. Because there's an intergenerational pact also in many family choices. And women are almost always those who nurse parents and parents-in-law, stealing time to their jobs, professional fulfillment and, therefore, readjusting and lowering their future pensions".

On Thursday 31 May the session "Contemporary witness" (the appreciated format of meetings with some important people) will be opened by Carlo De Benedetti, who will tell us about the transformation of the Italian job market in Italy in the last 50 years and how the mechanisms of selecting the ruling class, starting from the managements of big companies, have changed. On Friday 1 June the Witness of times will be the figure of the school teacher, who has always been a connection between different generations. Not only this. In this edition of the Festival the whole sector of the School will be treated with a particular care. Then, on Saturday 2 June, the time will come when two magistrates at the front line in the battle against organized crime, Giuseppe Pignatone, public prosecutor in Rome, and Michele Prestipino, deputy public prosecutor at the Antimafia District Directorate of Reggio Calabria, will answer the questions of Gaetano Savatteri on intergenerational relationships in Mafia gangs. Like every year we will hear many influential voices of economists, such as Orazio Attanasio, Alberto Bisin, Pietro Garibaldi, Andrea Ichino, Annamaria Lusardi, Michele Polo, Lucrezia Reichlin, Salvatore Rossi, Pier Luigi Sacco, Michele Salvati.

The strength and the importance of this Festival also depends on the fact that a significant number of leading personalities, though their different backgrounds and experiences, bring forward their points of view in the economic debates. Just to mention a few names: Andrea Beltratti, Paolo Bertoluzzo, Remo Bodei, Andrea Carandini, Gianluca Comin, IIvo Diamanti, Oscar Giannino, Gustavo Pietropolli Charmet, Alessandro Profumo, Federico Rampini, Chiara Saraceno, Pierluigi Stefanini, Silvia Vegetti Finzi, Pierluigi Stefanini.

Unimondo Editorial Office.

 

 

 

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