Clarity in a Messy World - Season 1 Bocconi University

The power of voice is something we seldom think about. Yet voice is ubiquitous and can be extremely effective, as podcast listeners know very well. What makes speech unique, compared with images? What chords does it strike? And how can we harness the power of voice? Kurt Munz, assistant professor of marketing at Bocconi, unfolds for us the meaning of "auditory information processing" starting from his own experience as an officer in the US Navy.

The extent of climate change if not its very existence is a hotly contested topic. Scientists though have little doubt that this is happening now, and that action is urgently required. Economists are definitely doing their part, since a changing climate is bound to have a huge impact on world economy. But the effort towards limiting the damage is also a cost, which governments are reluctant to bear as the benefit is so hard to measure. Hear podcast host David Wayne Callahan as he talks to Valentina Bosetti, professor of environmental and climate change economics at Bocconi, about the challenges we face and will be facing if too little is done.

We all know that the so-called "glass ceiling" is still very real. Some progress notwithstanding, women are still generally underrepresented and underpaid. Paola Profeta, who teaches Public Economics at Bocconi University where she also leads the AXA Research Lab on Gender Equality, talks about what empirical evidence there is about policies that may help reduce the gender gap. The Covid crisis also shed light on the priorities set by women leaders and preliminary results seem to confirm that women at the top were indeed more successful than men at handling the pandemic. Finally, we should not overlook the fact that diversity has many dimensions, and equality must be sought on all of them.

Resilience, usually defined as the ability to bounce back to the previous state after a shock, can be more accurately described as a process by which an organisation weathers a stressful event not just by returning to its original form but improving itself in a sort of dynamic adaptation close to the evolution of natural species.

But what are the mental processes that enable this approach? Can we identify a "resilient mindset"?

With Carlo Salvato, professor of business strategy at Bocconi.

Globalization seemed poised to rule the world. Instead, it is now under attack by various protectionist and populist forces. We are therefore bound to accept that it was not unavoidable and it is not irreversible, as it is a political choice as opposed to a necessary historical process. Were people promised something that could not be delivered? Is the anger justified? Gianmarco Ottaviano, who holds the Achille and Giulia Boroli chair of European Studies at Bocconi, also addresses the effects of the pandemic and Brexit on globalization and the longstanding issue of whether automation kills jobs.

What exactly is a “tax haven”? How does money end up in such a place, and how can it do so undetected? This merits a whole field of study, as we find out in this captivating podcast. With Hannes Wagner, Associate Professor of Finance at Bocconi.