Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Colleagues,
It is a great pleasure to welcome you all to Banca d'Italia for this workshop, jointly organized with CEPR and LUISS University. Let me thank the organizing committee for having put together such an impressive programme, and William Mundell and the sponsors of the Robert Mundell Chair at Columbia University for launching this initiative.
We are gathered here today to honour one of the greatest economists of the twentieth century. Professor Robert Mundell was awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences 'for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas'.
Yet this Nobel citation captures only part of Professor Mundell's intellectual legacy. His work spans a remarkably broad range of topics: the macroeconomics of monetary unions, the architecture of the international monetary system, and the geopolitical forces shaping it. It is this breadth that makes his work so relevant today.
Professor Mundell began a 1969 paper with words that sound strikingly contemporary: 'Europe today stands at a cross-roads. In politics. In technology. In economics. In culture'. More than half a century later, Europe is again at such a crossroads. War, geopolitical rivalry and economic fragmentation are reshaping trade, energy markets and strategic dependencies. Artificial intelligence is opening vast opportunities, while raising profound questions about productivity, inequality, security and sovereignty.
