Professor & Pictet Chair @GVAGrad, VP @cepr_org & Director ICMB. Before @UNCTAD @the_IDB @AUB_Lebanon @unito 2 daughters. FVCG ⛷🏍 Twitter handle @upanizza
www.upanizza.com
Ugo Panizza is an Italian and Swiss economist. He is a professor of International Economics, department head, and Pictet Chair in Finance and Development at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. He is a vice-president of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), the director of the International Center for Monetary and Banking Studies, the editor in chief of Oxford Open Economics and International Development Policy, and the deputy director of the Centre for Finance and Development. He is a members of the Scientific Committees of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi (Torino) and Long-term Investors@UniTo. .. more
👉 Register here: agenda.ccig.ch/agenda/2026/...
👋 Introduction by Mario Marchesini
📍 CCIG, Geneva | 12:00–14:00
Doors open 11:30 | 🍸 Cocktail from 13:00
The Economic Consequences of the Second Trump Administration (CCIG) & @gvagrad.bsky.social
Trump’s second term is reshaping the US economy — with major spillovers for Europe, emerging markets, and the global order.
FDI can boost production and exports without delivering the same boost to domestic value added and productivity.
So aggregate growth regressions may miss the real story.
FDI is most strongly linked to growth when GVC integration is low…
…but the relationship fades (or flips) as global production becomes more fragmented.
FDI ↗ growth in the primary sector
~ no robust link in the secondary sector
FDI ↘ growth in the tertiary sector
✅ The old story—“FDI works if you have enough human capital / finance”—is robust in the 1970s–80s
❌ But it largely disappears in later decades.
It reflects how the world economy has changed—especially with the rise of global value chains (GVCs).
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Yet in the data, its link with growth is often weak, unstable, or absent.
Paraphrasing Solow:
we see FDI everywhere… except in growth regressions.
Why?
“The Elusive Link Between FDI and Economic Growth: Sectoral Heterogeneity and Global Value Chains.”
FDI is everywhere in policy debates…
@gvagrad.bsky.social
ideas.repec.org/p/tcd/tcduee...
I’m especially happy to share that next week the LSE will host a conference built around the “Too Much Finance” agenda.
@alexcobham.bsky.social & David Cobham. @taxjustice.net @gvagrad.bsky.social
lnkd.in/dDTksgHx
It was eventually published in 2015 in the Journal of Economic Growth.
What we didn’t anticipate was how far the research agenda would travel: the paper has now nearly 3000 citations & spurred a broader literature on the real effects of financial sector expansion.
ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jecgro...
In 2012, Jean-Louis Arcand, Enrico Berkes and I issued an IMF WP: “Too Much Finance?”
It shows that finance supports growth up to a point but at some point more finance can hurt
The road to publication wasn’t smooth. The paper received many desk rejections…
ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa...