Antonio Bassanetti is an economist at the Bank of Italy. He is member of the working groups on economic statistics within the SEBC and on potential output within the EU. He is co-author of "€COIN: A Real Time Coincident Index of the Euro Area Business Cycle" (CEPR Discussion Paper n. 3108), of “Turning-point Indicators from Business Surveys: Real-time Detection for the Euro Area and its Major Member Countries” and of “The Italian Growth in the Nineties: Technological Gap and Productivity Slowdown” (Banca d’Italia, Temi di discussione n. 500 and 539). His current research focuses on potential output for Germany, France and Italy and on the impact of housing market dynamics on Italian families consumption.

Bassanetti will be at CES during the academic year 2005-06.

Éloi Laurent has also taught European economic and social integration in 2004-2005 in Stanford University and Collège des hautes études européennes (La Sorbonne) in Paris. A former aide in the French Parliament (1999-2000) and for the French Prime minister (2000-2002), he is the co-author of the first volume of theReport on the State of the European Union (2005). He has been a visiting student in the Centre for European Studies in NYU (2003) and a visiting scholar in the Department of Economics (2002) and Business School of Columbia University (2004). His project concentrates on the consequences of institutional competition (tax, social protection, regulation) for redistribution policies in the process of European integration.

Pitruzzello is Senior Scholar at Tulane University. He is author of Globalization, Economic Performance, and the Welfare State (Polity Press, Forthcoming). He has also authored articles in such journals as International Organization and Social Research. He was a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute between 1998 and 2000 investigating the dynamics linking globalization and the welfare state. He is currently researching the long-term historical dynamics that characterize the development of global capitalism since the 19th century. This project examines how globalization affects the long-term coevolution of economic performance and social protection in advanced industrial democracies.