Growth Welfare Innovation Productivity (GROWINPRO)

Well before the Great Recession, the strikingly successful socio-economic regime of growth of the three decades after WWII came to an end as the smooth matching among technological innovation, productivity growth, income distribution and aggregate demand increasingly broke down. However, a new virtuous regime is hardly emerging and growth of income and productivity remains sluggish especially in Europe. The project is meant to investigate the causes of the slowdown and to propose an integrated policy package able to sustain an inclusive and welfare-enhancing process of growth resilient to climate change and population aging. In some respects, the proposal represents the deepening of the ‘diagnostic exercise’ we have undertaken in a very successful H2020 project: ISIGrowth http://www.isigrowth.eu/. In many others it extends the scope of the investigation, fully addressing the whole thread of the interaction among innovation, productivity, and growth in a world possibly undergoing a' IV Industrial Revolution', wherein globalization exacerbated the diverging patterns of value distribution among countries and social groups. Together, it will thoroughly study the effects of monetary, fiscal and mission-oriented policies in stimulating productivity and output growth. The team comprises leading international scholars ranging from economics of innovation, industrial dynamics, econometrics, agent-based macroeconomics, and public governance. Crucially a group of National Statistical Offices will join the research, also developing new data and measurements. The policy recommendations will be grounded on solid micro-, meso- and macro analyses, always accounting for the feedbacks between Schumpeterian (supply side) dynamics and Keynesian (demand side) ones. The relevance and adequacy of the proposed policies will be continuously challenged by the interaction with a whole set of stakeholders belonging to European Institutions, civil society, and business.