Nicoletta Batini

Nicoletta Batini (born April 15, 1970) is an Italian economist,^[1] notable as a scholar of innovative monetary and fiscal policy practices, as well as structural reforms for the promotion of export competitiveness especially in the shipping industry. She began her active career as an economist with the Bank of England in London and has handled extensive consultancy roles in the public sector. She is currently a Director of Italy’s Department of the Treasury within the Ministry of Economy and Finances (Italy) in Rome in charge of the international economy and economic policies.

Early life and education

Batini obtained a Laurea Degree in Economics and Business from the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa with a thesis on the comparative analysis of the micro-economic impact of antitrust regulations on the international shipping of bulk goods, a M.Soc.Sc. from the University of Birmingham, a PhD degree in Economics from the University of Oxford, and a second Ph.D., in International Finance, from the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies. She has been awarded important grants both from the Economic and Social Research Council in the United Kingdom, the University of Pisa, and Nemetria.^[2]

Career

Batini at the Central Reserve Bank of Peru in 2006 launching a book on dollarization

After earning her second Ph.D., she began her career at the Bank of England as an Economist from 1997 to 1999 in Monetary Policy Analysis.^[3] In 2000, Batini was recruited by Professor Willem Buiter and Dame DeAnne Julius to become a Research Adviser of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee and a founding member of the Monetary Policy Committee Unit. Quickly renown in the profession for her innovative ideas and publications on monetary policy practices and strategies, launched at prestigious international conferences of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, she was recruited with consultancy roles by the Department for International Development (DFID) of the UK Government, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the South African Reserve Bank, the Bank of Canada and the Czech National Bank, among others, for which she became External Member of the Research Committee in 2001 –a position she held for four consecutive terms until 2011. In 2002 she was invited as Visiting Researcher by the Directorate Research of the European Central Bank. Her work during that time is then cited by the ECB as one of those having influenced the bank’s decision to change monetary policy strategy in 2003.^[4][5]

In 2003 she went on to work as a Senior Economist with the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. where she led an era of new economic thinking within the Fund with pioneering work on global imbalances, inflation targeting in emerging markets and the macroeconomic impact of the world’s demographic change, all of which had lasting effects on the Fund’s policy approach towards advice and conditionality toward its members.^[3][6][7]

From 2004 until 2013, she held a succession of posts in the IMF, including Resident Representative in Peru between 2006 and 2008. During these years she worked on reforms to boost export competitiveness notably via an ambitious reform of ports and logistics of the Pacific and the Amazons and their custom systems, the reform of the National System of Public Investment (SNIP), and measures to render the regulation of public-private partnerships aimed at logistic and transport infrastructure more effective and sound. She also co-authored with the Central Reserve Bank of Peru and European and U.S. universities several works on de-dollarization through structural reforms.^[8][9]

In 2007 she was appointed Professor of Economics at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom.

In early 2008 she returned to Washington D.C. to work on Chile but was co-opted in late 2008 to work on Canada and the United States, which had just entered the global financial crisis leading advanced missions and acting as Deputy Mission Chief on several occasions. Her work focused intensely on the sustainability of US public finances,^[10][11] the countercyclical impact of the state balanced-budget rules and the employment and domestic demand impact of NAFTAs’ automotive sector and bailouts with a focus on trends in international transport and logistics and the impact of swings in the USD/CAD bilateral onto the global automotive value chain. As the crisis moved to Europe, she also moved to the European Department with assignments on countries in the Nord Range, and Israel, with a specific role in EUR’s Financial Regulation Committee of Experts dealing with macro prudential rules and supervision of European Global Systemic International Financial Institutions (SIFIs), notably Nordea and Danske Bank. Batini was then made the youngest member of the Editorial Board of the IMF’s prestigious Finance & Development magazine. Between 2011 and 2012 Batini was Alternate President of the IMF’s Staff Association Committee (SAC)—the Fund’s Trade Union. She is interviewed repeatedly by the media for her seminal work –the first to forcefully challenge, and eventually steer the Fund’s orthodox view on austerity—on the dangers of excessive fiscal austerity and ways to consolidate public debt successfully through gradualism to shelters growth.^[12][13][14]

In 2013 she took leave from the IMF to become a Director of the Treasury Department of the Ministry of Economics and Finance in Italy leading the office in charge of political and international economies. Her portfolio includes the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (particularly the OECD’s Working Party 3 and of the Economic Development Review Committee (ERDC)), the G-20 including dossier G7/G8, Bruegel (for which exercises the role of Sherpa to the Director General of the Treasury) and the Bellagio Group. Batini teaches analytic methods of early warning and macroeconomic risk management at the High School of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.

Personal life

While at Oxford, Batini was an active member of the Oxford Civil Liberties Society, and remains today an active member of St. Antony’s College Alumni and of the Ex-Allievi of S.S.S.U.P. S.Anna and while in the United Kingdom acted as Key Volunteer for 'Catholic Agency for Overseas Development' CAFOD. A polyglot, she has travelled extensively. She has two (twin) children who are American-Italian citizens and were born in Washington D.C. in 2009.

References