Introductory Remarks: Francesco Profumo, President, Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo and Giorgio Barba Navaretti, President, Fondazione Collegio Carlo Alberto

Panel: Gian Maria Gros-Pietro, Chairman, Intesa Sanpaolo, Michael Spence, Emeritus Professor of Economics and Management, Stanford Business School; Recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics.

Moderator: Tonia Mastrobuoni, Correspondent, La Repubblica

Italian/English and English/Italian translation available.

Beside Governments, banks are playing a central role in facing the emergency caused by the Covid pandemic, distributing resources to sustain the economy and the society. At the same time, growing income inequality – exacerbated by the crisis – and environmental issues call for financial institutions and corporations in general to follow socially sustainable business models. Even the most market-driven players, such as large US private equity funds, require that the companies in which they invest pursue socially- and environmentally-sustainable objectives. Similarly, the CEOs of the largest US corporations, as part of the Business Round Table, recently argued that business leaders must set objectives that address social issues and can no longer limit themselves to pursuing the maximization of returns for their shareholders.

This social role, however, must go hand in hand with the banks’ financial stability. Indeed, low interest rates are a levy on banks’ profitability. Even before the pandemic, banking supervisors publicly raised concerns on the ability of banks to cover the cost of capital and generate sustainable profit flows.

How can banks balance the need for sustainable profits and a sustainable society, also contributing to overcome the Covid crisis?

This question will be addressed in a debate between Gian Maria Gros-Pietro and Michael Spence, chaired by Tonia Mastrobuoni.

Gian Maria Gros-Pietro is Chairman of Banca Intesa Sanpaolo, which keeps posting very high profits, levels of capitalization amongst the highest for European banks and at the same times is explicitly tapping sustainable and inclusive growth patterns as one of its key business objectives.

Michael Spence is an Emeritus Professor of Economics and Management and former Dean of Stanford Business School. He is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and an adjunct professor at SDA Bocconi. In 2001, he received the Nobel Prize for Economics for his contribution, together with Joseph Stiglitz and George Akerlof, to understanding the impact of information asymmetry on economic activity: He dedicated much of his most recent writings to need to review the key ingredients of economic growth and the role of a sustainable model of economic activity.  He is the author of “The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multi-speed World”.

Law academic, linguist and theologian Dr Michael Spence AC has been Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney for a dozen years, & in that time he’s modernised and simplified the venerated sandstone institution, by essentially bringing together what he saw as a bunch of warring Faculty factions, to unite to make the university more community-facing, rather than inward-looking. Along the way he’s had his critics and some spectacular fails. But one of his enduring successes was the massive Inspired! fundraising initiative instigated by Michael Spence 10 years ago. With an initial target to raise $600million, Spence and his team built the campaign around some winning arguments to potential donors around the exciting future between the university and the community’s needs. And contrary to what many warned him about Australians not giving to higher education, Spence backed his own judgement that Australians would donate generously, if the ask was framed properly.  The Inspired! campaign ended up outdoing itself…

the final amount raised was $1 Billion.

In this interview Spence talks about how he and the team built and executed that winning campaign. Plus, how he and USyd are managing through the Covid19 crisis, not only with international border closures and absent foreign students, but also with the growing political backlash towards China and its influence affecting universities.

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Michael Spence is a Nobel Prize-winning economist, leading expert in Industry 4.0, and someone with the opportunity to advise the Chinese government. He joins this episode of Dollar & Sense to discuss global technology competition and how emerging technologies will affect the future of economic development.  

Dollar and Sense is a part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Send feedback email to BCP@Brookings.edu, and follow us at @policypodcasts on Twitter.

Dr Michael Spence is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney. Under his leadership, the University has risen to 1st in Australia and 4th in the world for graduate employability. An alumnus of the University, Dr Spence has a BA with first-class honours in English, Italian and Law. He is recognised internationally as a leader in the field of intellectual property theory and holds a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Oxford. In 2017, Dr Spence was awarded a Companion of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours List for  leadership of the tertiary education sector and to the Anglican Church of Australia. He was ordained an Anglican priest in 2007.

Andrew Michael Spence—Nobel laureate, Professor of Economics at the NYU Stern School of Business, and Co-Chair of INET’s Commission on Global Economic Transformation—talks to Rob about how the U.S. government typically errs on the side of doing too little, too late, in response to major crises like the coronavirus pandemic. Spence and Rob compare and contrast how governments in the U.S., Europe, and Asia have responded to COVID-19.

Michael Spence is Associate Artistic Director of Theatre Gargantua and an award-winning, long-standing member of Theatre Gargantua’s creative team. He has been involved in all of TG’s productions, appearing in all major Cycles and writing or designing for many of the company’s noted works. His script for The Exit Room was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play, and he won the award twice for Outstanding Set Designs. He has received a total of ten Dora nominations for his work with the company, winning four.

Michael is a recipient of a Harold Award, a distinguished honour for members of the Toronto independent theatre community. He is also an accomplished musician and singer-songwriter. He directed the first SideStream Cycle, Shrapnel, which represented his directorial debut with the company.

The Wager
Inspired by true events, The Wager is award-winning Theatre Gargantua’s bold and irreverent investigation into the strange things that people believe. Climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers, creationists, in-your-face-fact-defying-politicians, and yes, flat-earthers; beliefs held by a surprising number of intelligent humans, beliefs that not only defy logic, but could be threatening our existence on the planet. Now more than ever, the stakes could not be higher.

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Bloomberg Opinion columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews economist and Nobel laureate Michael Spence, whose research interests include emerging markets and the impact of leadership on growth. A professor of economics at NYU’s Stern School of Business, Spence is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Philip H. Knight Professor Emeritus of Management at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.