TBS International Electives & 

Finance Economics and Econometrics Lab

Research Workshop

Date: Wednesday, March 8th, 2023, from 18h00 to 19h30 (Paris Time).

Following the initiative of Andrea Mantovani, TBS is organizing a workshop in which three participants of the TBS International Electives will present research papers. Each speaker will present for 25 mins. You are cordially invited to the workshop, which will take place in:

Room 327, TBS Education Lascrosses building, 20 boulevard Lascrosses, Toulouse.

The workshop will be followed by a cocktail from 19h30 to 20h30 at Maison Good (30 Bd Maréchal Leclerc, 31000 Toulouse), where TBS professors and staff are invited.

18.00 – 18.10: Brief Introduction

18.10 – 18.35:  Marcus De Freitas (China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing and Policy Center for the New South in Rabat): “China and a New World Order After Ukraine”

18.35 – 19.00: Marco Provvidera (LUISS Business School in Amsterdam and University of South Alabama): “Private Sector Can't Ignore Geopolitics Anymore”

19.00 – 19.25: Roberto Antonietti (University of Padua): “Skills for circular innovation”

19.30 – 20.30: Cocktail at Maison Good (30 Bd Maréchal Leclerc, 31000 Toulouse).

1st speaker: Marcus De Freitas (China Foreign Affairs University, Beijing and Policy Center for the New South, Rabat).

Title: “China and a New World Order After Ukraine”

Abstract: China’s rise has been impressive. Though facing enormous challenges as its global relevance has grown, the Chinese have taken measures to alter the poverty legacy from the past and create a new future of prosperity. The period of Reform and Opening up profoundly changed the face of China. Of course, many criticisms are still levied against China: human rights, lack of democracy, authoritarianism, and increased assertiveness in the international arena. Despite these, the Chinese social-inclusion and development record, based on an economic model that has effectively developed significant positive welfare results, is admirable. Such results have increased Chinese ambitions, particularly in terms of reshaping global governance and the liberal world order, which, established after the Second World War, has grown old and less effective. China has pursued new multilateral arrangements for building a new world order. Still, the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have slowed down the process and increased tensions with the West. How China responds to such challenges affects the Global South, particularly in the transition period.

Bio: Here is a link to the speaker’s website

https://www.policycenter.ma/experts/marcus

2rd speaker: Marco Provvidera (LUISS Business School, Amsterdam and University of South Alabama, Mitchell College of Business).

Title: “Private Sector Can't Ignore Geopolitics Anymore”

Abstract: The fundamental relevance for the private sector of international relations and global geopolitical balance verges on the obvious for both economists and political theorists/social scientists. A strict interplay with the strategic sciences and the international law is as well implied in major scholarship landings as Gilpin’s “International Political Economy” (IPE), and Oatley’s “interconnected complexity”. Nonetheless, for decades, the global business sector has been choosing a “minimalist” approach based on the “neutrality of business” tenet. At the present day, such minimalism has become clearly untenable: “Great Power Competition”, or the current global division into competing blocs, comes at such a financial cost and an existentially demanding calls for choice, that the corporate world simply cannot ignore geopolitics anymore. Our short overview is aimed at prompting a reckoning on the oversize impact international security issues have on daily conduct of business, and on the academic approach to the “business school” prevailing model.     

 3rd speaker: Roberto Antonietti (University of Padua, Department of Economics and Management).

Title: “Skills for circular economy innovation”

joint with Davide Antonioli, Luca Cattani, Elisa Chioatto, Giulio Pedrini

Abstract: The paper is the first outcome of a recent research project aimed at analyzing the role of education, tasks, skills, and other job characteristics in affecting firms’ propensity to innovate in a sample of manufacturing firms located in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. Specifically, we test whether firms introducing circular economy innovations (CEI) are characterized by more complex task and skill profiles than companies introducing other types of innovations, or not innovating at all. Moreover, we test whether the availability of more complex tasks and skills affects the propensity of firms to introduce CEI vs non-CEI, once controlling for a series of other confounding factors. In doing so, we extend the recent literature on green jobs and green innovation in two ways. First, we focus on CEI, i.e., product and process innovations that are aimed at reducing the use of water and natural resources, raw materials and energy, and/or favouring product repairing and recycling. Different from the literature that uses patents to proxy for the innovative activity of firms, we rely on survey-based information on the actual introduction of innovation. Second, we link this information with two other data sources: administrative data on employees, which allow mapping the distribution of occupational profiles in each firm, and O*NET-type survey on tasks and skills allow linking each occupational profile to its constituent tasks and skills.  

Bio: Here is a link to the speaker’s website

https://sites.google.com/site/robertoantonietti77/

For more information, please contact: Andrea Mantovani a.mantovani@tbs-education.fr or Pierre Mella-Barral p.mella-barral@tbs-education.fr