Luigi Bonatti

Luigi Bonatti is an economist who has also strong interests in the philosophy of social sciences. His current research relates to growth theory and sustainable development, open macroeconomics and international economics, rationality in the formation of beliefs, preferences and in public choices. Bonatti studied philosophy at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa (Italy). His interest in the philosophy of social sciences led him to continue his studies at Columbia University, where he got a Ph.D. in economics under the supervision of Edmund Phelps. He primarily has had his academic career in Italy and is currently professor of economics and deputy director of the School of International Studies at the University of Trento (Italy). In recent years, he taught at Tsinghua University (China) and at the Azerbaijian Diplomatic Academy of Baku (Azerbaijan), and he was visiting at the University of California, Berkeley (USA).

In his recent works, Bonatti has addressed the evolution of the Chinese growth paradigm and its consequences for the world economy, the crisis of the Eurozone and the German standpoint on that crisis, policies to take the persistent Italian stagnation, the features of the U.S. socio-economic model that contributed to conditions for the global financial crisis, the structural causes underlying the slowing down of long-run growth in the advanced economies, and the possibility that people’s well-being worsens as an effect of GDP growth driven by the deterioration of environmental and social assets. Bonatti is also currently committed to a research project studying whether and how aggregate outcomes and public decision-making in contemporary mass societies tend to deviate systematically from the trajectories and the standards dictated by a neoclassical ideal of rationality. This research, which raises delicate cognitive and epistemological issues, has relevant implications for theories of economic policy and of democracy.