VI Rodolfo Debenedetti Lecture – John van Reenen

The VI Rodolfo Debenedetti Lecture was held at Università Bocconi by John Van Reenen (London School of Economics).

The global economic crisis has forced policy markets and businessmen to focus on how to rekindle economic growth. This lecture will discuss the results from a new branch of economic thinking that sees management as a critical factor in restoring prosperity. For the past decade, John Van Reenen has been leading an international research team of leading academics and business people focusing how to measure and explain management practices in over 20 countries including the US, Italy, China, India and Japan. We document the huge variation in management quality across firms. But why is there such tremendous variation between countries and also within countries? And what causes some bosses to be terrible and others to be great? A few factors are key in driving better management and productivity, and the lecture will draw out the implications of these for business people and policy makers trying to boost performance in Italy and overseas.

The lecture was introduced by Guido Tabellini (Università Bocconi) and Luigi Guiso (European University Institute).

Selected John Van Reenen’s publications:

• Why Do Management Practices Differ across Firms and Countries? (with Nicholas Bloom), Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2010
• Human Resource Management and Productivity (with Nicholas Bloom), 2010, Handbook of Labor Economics Volume 4B (2011) in Orley Ashenfelter and David Card (eds). Chapter 19 1697-1769

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