Nicola Acocella


Nicola Acocella is an Italian economist and academic, Emeritus Professor of Economic Policy since 2014.
In 1963 he graduated in Economics from the “Sapienza University of Rome” with a thesis on ‘Time lags in economic policy’, under the supervision of Federico Caffè. After becoming full professor, he got a reputation for his holistic contribution to systematisation and development of Economic policy. He also introduced remarkable innovations in the theory of economic policy as well as in monetary and fiscal policy and the theory of social pacts.

Academic career

During his career Prof. Acocella had the opportunity to exchange views or to co-operate with some of the most important economists of the twentieth century, such as Kenneth Arrow, Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz and other eminent professors like Paul De Grauwe, Alexis Jacquemin, Adrian Pagan, Luigi L. Pasinetti, Douglas Hibbs, Andrew Hughes Hallett, Peter J. Hammond.
He has visited, among others, the University of Cambridge, Oxford, Toronto, Harvard, Reading, Stanford as well as the European Union and the United Nations.
He has been Professor of Economics with the University of Perugia; Professor of Industrial organization and Economic Policy at the University of Calabria; Professor of Economic Policy, Sapienza University of Rome. He has also been Head of the Department of Economics, University of Calabria; Head of the Economics Graduate Studies Program, Sapienza University of Rome; Member of the Research Commission, Sapienza University of Rome

Membership and associations

Prof. Acocella has developed his expertise in several research fields. He worked first on industrial organisation and globalization. Among his numerous contributions in this field: a dynamic version of the static limit pricing model by Bain, Modigliani and Sylos Labini and a model for transfer pricing by multinational firms as well as a number of essays on the distributional and employment effects of globalization
He has also contributed to the theory of social pacts, their substitutability with other institutions – such as a conservative central banker – in order to ensure monetary stability, their implementation, with specific reference to the long-term Italian issue of a low productivity dynamics.
He has also investigated monetary and fiscal policy, both in abstract terms and with reference to the European institutional architecture.
A final path of analysis has led him to lay down a systematic approach to economic policy as a discipline to some extent autonomous from the rest of economic science, by enquiring on the various needs to heal market failures as well as the directions and the design of public policy.
About one of his contributions the Nobel prize Amartya Sen has said:
Of specific interest is his reformulation of the classical theory of economic policy laid down by Jan Tinbergen, Theil and Ragnar Frisch in a setting immune from Lucas critique. This offers a novel contribution to the analysis of conditions not only for policy effectiveness or neutrality, but also for existence, uniqueness or multiplicity of the equilibrium in strategic games. The theory is of use also in an institutional perspective as a theory of conflict resolutions and optimal institution setting.

Notable publishing activities

Referee for various journals and international institutions. Among them: Cambridge University Press, Canadian Journal of Economics, Journal of Macroeconomics, Journal of Public Economic Theory, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, United Nations.

Honours and fellowships

A selection of his published works follows:

Monographs in English language