The future of production: digitalisation, GVCs, green transition

The second YSI-Sant'Anna workshop will take place in hybrid format, and it will feature selected presentations on the future of global production from senior and young scholars.

For those willing to participate in person, the event will be held at the Sant’ Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa (see details on the full programme). In order to register, please fill the registration form above, indicating whether you intend to participate in presence or online.

Workshop description

The recent shocks to international production have highlighted, on the one hand, that manufacturing is still the "backbone of our economies", on the other, that it is far more vulnerable than what we had thought. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how easily international production chains can be disrupted. Further, the needed green transition poses challenges that are hardly matched by current industrial and innovation policies. The return of war in Europe has emphasized the need to accelerate the energy transition. These challenges need to be tackled accounting also for the new technological paradigms affecting the international division of labor and, even more, for the workforce's skill structure.

Building upon the 2022 UNIDO Industrial Development Report, the initiative intends to foster the discussion on the renewed importance of the industrial sector and how to improve its resilience, favoring a debate among young and senior scholars. Three sessions feature cutting-edge contributions on core domains of analyses to interpret the upcoming challenges of the industrial sector by integrating perspectives from evolutionary, structuralist and complexity economics. The first one is dedicated to the challenge of digitalization and adoption of 4.0 technologies faced by firms and sectors in the current post-pandemic phase. The second session targets the dangers and opportunities deriving from Global Value Chains integration, focusing on employment dynamics and the changing geography of production. The third session discusses the possible conceptual frameworks for a sustainable transition, with particular insights on how this relates to renewable energy technology and more in general, with green technologies development. A final roundtable hosts contributions of leading scholars discussing the 2022 UNIDO Industrial Development Report, titled 'The Future of Industrialization in a Post-Pandemic World'.