Massimo Egidi
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Massimo Egidi (born 1 December 1942) is an Italian
economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
. He is Professor of Economics at
Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli Luiss University () is a private university located in Rome, Italy, founded in 1974 by a group of entrepreneurs led by Umberto Agnelli. It provides undergraduate and postgraduate education, in addition to a range of Double Degree programs, in ...
in Rome and former rector of the university. With the late
Axel Leijonhufvud Axel Leijonhufvud (6 September 1933 – 2 May 2022)
of the original.
was a Swedi ...
, he was co-director of CELL, the Laboratory of Computable and Experimental Economics at the
University of Trento The University of Trento (Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Trento'') is an Italian university located in Trento and nearby Rovereto. It has been able to achieve considerable results in didactics, research, and international relations accord ...
. His main research interests are related to the study of boundedly rational behaviors in organizations and institutions.


Career

Born in
Turin Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is main ...
, Egidi is a professor at
Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli Luiss University () is a private university located in Rome, Italy, founded in 1974 by a group of entrepreneurs led by Umberto Agnelli. It provides undergraduate and postgraduate education, in addition to a range of Double Degree programs, in ...
in Rome, where he served as rector from 2006 until 2016, after being rector of the University of Trento from 1996 to 2004. His academic career started at the
Polytechnic of Turin The Polytechnic University of Turin (, abbreviated as PoliTO) is the oldest Italian public technical university. The university offers several courses in the fields of Engineering, Architecture, Urban Planning and Industrial Design, and is consi ...
, continuing at the Faculty of Political Sciences (1965–1986) at the University of Trento (1987–2001), and then at Rome-based
Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli Luiss University () is a private university located in Rome, Italy, founded in 1974 by a group of entrepreneurs led by Umberto Agnelli. It provides undergraduate and postgraduate education, in addition to a range of Double Degree programs, in ...
(since 2005). In addition to his academic position, he was also chairman of the Bruno Kessler Foundation of Trento until 2014 Egidi was visiting fellow at the
Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) is a private research university in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1853 by a group of civic leaders and named for George Washington, the university spans 355 acres across its Danforth ...
(1975), visiting professor at the Center for Research on Management at the Graduate Business School of the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
(1993), and visiting scholar at the
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) is an independent International research institute located in Laxenburg, near Vienna in Austria, founded as an East-West scientific cooperation initiative during the Cold War. Th ...
(1994), at
Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
(2003), at the
Santa Fe Institute The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, inc ...
, and at the École Politecnique, the
École Normale Supérieure École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...
, and the
Collège de France The (), formerly known as the or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment () in France. It is located in Paris near La Sorbonne. The has been considered to be France's most ...
in Paris. He is co-chairman with Jean Paul Fitoussi of the Herbert Simon Society and is founder and director, with Axel Leijonhufvud, of the Laboratory of Experimental and Computational Economics (CEEL, Trento). Egidi is a member of some scientific and academic committees, including the Scientific Committee of ESNIE – European School on New Institutional Economics, the Université de Paris X, and of the Doctorate in Economics at
Sciences Po Sciences Po () or Sciences Po Paris, also known as the Paris Institute of Political Studies (), is a public research university located in Paris, France, that holds the status of ''grande école'' and the legal status of . The university's unde ...
(Paris). He is associate editor of a number of Italian and foreign journals, including ''Industrial and Corporate Change'' and ''Mind and Society''. He was responsible for the National Research Programme in the sector of Economics and Social Sciences 2009–2013. He is a member by right of the Scientific Committee of
Confindustria The General Confederation of Italian Industry (), commonly known as Confindustria, is the Italy, Italian small, medium, and big enterprises federation, acting as a private and autonomous chamber of commerce, founded in 1910. The association netwo ...
. Egidi participated in the activities of the European University Association (EUA), which performs a leader role in the creation of a European space for research and training. He was the representative of the conference of Italian rectors in the EUA, authorized to speak on issues of university governance, the relationship between industry and research, technology transfer, and research and innovation policies. Following his participation in European debate on the reform of university system ("Bologna process"), he has been the author of publications in the field of Higher Education policies. He is also a member of the UFI – Université Franco-Italienne, and has been a founding member of the AIT – Ateneo Italo Tedesco, holding the chairmanship until 2012.


Work

His work focuses on topics such as
behavioural economics Behavioral economics is the study of the psychological (e.g. cognitive, behavioral, affective, social) factors involved in the decisions of individuals or institutions, and how these decisions deviate from those implied by traditional economi ...
, theory of organisation and organisational learning, and theory of decisions, under the umbrella of the scientific approach developed by
Herbert A. Simon Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 – February 9, 2001) was an American scholar whose work influenced the fields of computer science, economics, and cognitive psychology. His primary research interest was decision-making within organi ...
(Nobel Prize 1980) from the 1950s onwards, which today is summarized as the
bounded rationality Bounded rationality is the idea that rationality is limited when individuals decision-making, make decisions, and under these limitations, rational individuals will select a decision that is satisficing, satisfactory rather than optimal. Limitat ...
approach. He serves as rector at LUISS University in Rome. A parallel line is represented by the collaboration with
Reinhard Selten Reinhard Justus Reginald Selten (; 5 October 1930 – 23 August 2016) was a German economics, economist, who won the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared with John Harsanyi and John Forbes Nash, John Nash). He is also well ...
(Nobel Prize 1994), again on the themes of bounded rationality, and by studies on Behavioural economics carried out in the last decade.


Study of biases in problem-solving

Egidi's experiments in problem solving suggest that biases in problem solving may result from the process of mental editing by which subjects produce an imperfect and incomplete representation of the decision problem. From these experiments, stable sub-optimal routinized behaviors emerged, and offered clear evidence that individuals, having discovered the solution of a problem in a limited domain, try to make use of the same solution beyond the original domain. This phenomenon has been previously discovered in a particular setting by Abraham S. Luchins and defined "mechanization of thought",Abraham S. Luchins (1942) Mechanization in problem solving. In: Psychological Monographs 34, APA: Washington. where individuals remain locked into the procedure they have learnt, without reacting to new instances of the problem even when a new and better solution is evidently available. Individuals therefore extrapolate the solution of a problem beyond the domain of optimality, because they have categorized the situation incompletely or imperfectly. They make in fact systematic use of default classifications in order to reduce the short-term memory load and the complexity of symbolic manipulation. The result is the construction of an imperfect mental representation of the problem that nevertheless has the advantage of being simple.
Herbert A. Simon Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 – February 9, 2001) was an American scholar whose work influenced the fields of computer science, economics, and cognitive psychology. His primary research interest was decision-making within organi ...
's bounded rationality can therefore be interpreted as full rationality within an imperfect representation.


Selected bibliography

Egidi is the author of many articles, papers, and chapters. This is a selection of some of the most significant of his works from 1990 to date. Journal articles * Ajmone Marsan G, Bellomon, Egidi M.(2008). Towards a mathematical theory of complex socio-economical system by functional subsystems representation, Kinetic and Related Models; p. 249-278, . * Egidi M.(2006). From Bounded Rationality to Behavioral Economics. Storia del Peniero Economico, vol. 1; p. 51–67, . * Egidi M.(2004). Distorsioni nelle decisioni razionali. Rivista Italiana Degli Economisti, vol. 1; p. 33–75, . * Egidi M.(2003). Razionalità Limitata. Sistemi Intelligenti, vol. XV; p. 67–72, . Chapters * Egidi M.(2012) "The cognitive explanation of economic behaviour:from Simon to Kahnerman" in Arena R., Festrè A., Lazaric, N. Handbook of Knowledge and Economics. Aldershot: Edward Elgar. * Egidi M.(2008). Le processus dual du raisonnement: origines, problèmes et perspectives. In: Walliser B., Economie et cognition.p. 11-54, Paris: Ophys/Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, . * Egidi M.(2003). Discrepancies:competing theories and ideologies as cognitive traps. In: Rizzello S. Editor, Cognitive Developments in Economics. London: Routledge. * Egidi M.(1996) “Routines, Hierarchies of Problems, Procedural Behaviour: Some Evidence from Experiments”. In: The rational foundations of economic behaviour, Arrow, Kenneth J., et al., editors, St. New York: Martin’s Press, London: Macmillan Press, in association with the International Economic Association. (114), 303–333.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Egidi, Massimo 1942 births Italian economists Living people Washington University in St. Louis fellows University of California, Berkeley faculty Academic staff of the Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli Academic staff of the University of Trento