Progetto di Eccellenza
La Legge di Stabilità 2017 (n. 232/2016) istituisce un "Fondo per il finanziamento dei dipartimenti universitari di eccellenza", volta ad incentivare, con un finanziamento quinquennale, l'attività dei Dipartimenti universitari che si caratterizzano per l'eccellenza nella qualità della ricerca e nella progettualità scientifica, organizzativa e didattica con riferimento alle finalità di ricerca di Industria 4.0. I progetti presentati dai 350 migliori Dipartimenti delle Università Statali (23 Dipartimenti dell'Università di Milano presenti nella graduatoria preliminare alla presentazione dei progetti per il finanziamento dell’eccellenza), sono stati valutati da una Commissione di sette membri che ha stilato la graduatoria finale dei 180 Dipartimenti di eccellenza assegnatari del finanziamento per il periodo 2023-2027.
Continuing in the footsteps of the 2018-22 Project of the Department of Excellence (competitive bid “Dipartimenti di Eccellenza” by the Italian Ministry of University and Research), which led to the creation of the Centre of Excellence in Economics and Data Science (CEEDS), the new 2023-2027 Project aims to further develop the Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods’ (DEMM) competences and activities in the broad area of Policy Evaluation.
The Department of Excellence (DoE) project at DEMM is organized around three main pillars that reflect various methods and approaches commonly used in counterfactual impact evaluation.
Reduced Form Methods is the first pillar. DEMM has several scholars who are experts in causal inference and use Reduced Form Methods to evaluate policies in a wide range of fields, including health, labor, education, migration, taxation, and innovation, to name a few. The DoE Project's goal is to gain additional knowledge and skills related to the application of causal inference to Big Data by leveraging the knowledge gathered by CEEDS.
Experimental Methods are the second pillar (both lab and in-the-field, such as Randomized Control Trials – RCTs). In this regard, the Project's goal is to strengthen the activities of the experimental economics laboratory, as well as to increase the use of RCTs for policy evaluation.
Structural Econometric Methods are the third and final pillar. While Reduced Form Methods are generally silent on the mechanisms responsible for a given policy's (in)effectiveness, Structural Methods allow for explicit modeling and testing of specific mechanisms and are essential for policy design. This is an important aspect of our Project, which aims to improve DEMM's capabilities in both Ex-post Policy Evaluation and Ex-ante Policy Design.
Importantly, the Project aims to improve the integration of Cost-Benefit Analysis into DEMM scholars' evaluation studies.