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The Department of Legal Studies of Bocconi University, Milan, Italy invites applications from outstanding scholars for a for a full-time, tenure-track Assistant Professor position in European Union Law beginning indicatively on 1st September 2025. The successful candidate will contribute to the teaching and research in EU law, as well as to broader research activities within the Bocconi Lab in European Studies (BLEST) and the Institute for European Policymaking (IEP). The teaching of EU law and most of the activities within BLEST and IEP are undertaken in English. 

The successful candidate must demonstrate a strong aptitude for teaching and research in European Union Law, as well as potential to produce excellent research and attract external funding. Candidates must have a track record of publications in top international journals commensurate to their career stage; teaching experience commensurate to their career stage as well as the ability to teach in English and act as course convenors in undergraduate and graduate modules. Candidates must be willing to engage actively with the initiatives of the BLEST and IEP Research Centers. 

We offer a dynamic research and teaching environment, state-of-the art facilities and teaching resources and research funding in line with leading academic European institutions. Compensation is competitive with top Law Schools and Universities. Applications must be submitted online via E-Form available at https://jobmarket.unibocconi.eu/?id=745. The deadline for submissions is 30th March 2025.

Bocconi University values diversity and pluralism and is committed to equal employment and educational opportunities without regard to age, race, color, national origin, ethnicity, religion, gender, sex, marital status, parental status, status as an individual with disabilities. Applicants should feel free to communicate to the selection panel circumstances that have had an impact on their career path, or their publication trajectory, such as parental leave, caring responsibilities, and impact of the Covid-19 lockdowns.

This will be the topic of a high-level European Taskforce led by Professor Ignazio Angeloni, IEP Fellow and former member of the Supervisory Board of the ECB.

Scope of the project

Identify and propose a set of concrete actions able to contribute, in a limited but material way, to the development of the euro area capital market, with the particular objective of serving the financing needs of new and innovative firms.

Outline

Initiatives aimed at developing European capital markets have so far typically looked at the “grand design” of creating a Capital Market Union (CMU) in all its components, including legal harmonization, single supervision,  or even the creation of a new, legal structure, the so-called 28th regime. 

This comprehensive top-down approach while intellectually satisfactory, usually faced opposition from member states, or the incumbents to one or another part of the proposals, leading to little progress on the ground.

This initiative would take a more bottom-up approach. Starting from the pressing financing needs of innovative firms, it would try to identify initiatives doable in a short to medium timeframe, to the extent possible under existing legislation, that help develop the capital market from multiple sides – alternative financing instruments, new issuance and negotiating platforms, facilitating access to risk capital by intermediaries, etc. 

Attention would be devoted to experiences already successful in EU countries or elsewhere, that may be more generally adopted. Such limited steps may be useful in themselves and also help toward a full-fledged CMU in a gradual way.

Areas that may be explored (among others):

1. The introduction at the EU level of saving-investment instruments modelled on the Swedish example of Investeringssparkonto (ISK), aimed at facilitating access to risk capital by individual savers by means of a favourable tax and regulatory treatment;

2. Adaptation of the EU prudential framework to facilitate risk capital investment by banks, insurance companies and pension funds;

3. Euro area level dedicated platform for issuance and negotiation of risk capital of innovative start-ups;

4. Actions to make IPOs easier and more attractive, by harmonizing and simplifying rules and prospectuses and by ensuring a protection of founders’ rights after going public;

5. Launch of an enhanced securitization framework for banks ensuring a prompt negotiability of new loans granted to small-medium innivative firms.

Successful completion of the project could also lead to further collaboration for students interested in writing their dissertation on related topics.

Interested candidates should send CV and cover letter explaining how they would tackle the project, providing details on each step.

The Industrial Scoreboard provides data on business R&D spending by country, industry and year of headquartered companies: https://iri.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.php/scoreboard/2023-eu-industrial-rd-investment-scoreboard#field_data

OECD data provide data on territorial business R&D spending by country, industry and year: https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/research-and-development-statistics.html

If headquartered > territorial local businesses must be spending for R&D elsewhere. Else, foreign businesses must be spending in R&D from abroad. 

The project includes two deliverables:

1. Merge the Industrial Scoreboard to OECD data at the country-industry-year level (merge m:1). This will require to define industries in a way that are compatible across the two datasets. All values should be expressed in the same units i.e., millions of current euros. All steps should be carefully documented in a separate dataset documentation (80%).
2. Collapse the dataset by summing the values of the Scoreboard companies by country, industry and year. Take the ratio of headquartered to territorial R&D spending by country and industry and produce charts to visualize the results (20%). 

Expected completion time: 2 months. 

Interested candidates should send CV and cover letter explaining why they are interested and how they would tackle the project.

Most analysis of past industrial policies are about success stories. Much less is known about past failures.

The scope of this project is compiling a list of prominent cases of failure of past industrial policies e.g. Concorde, in as many industries as possible, trying to identify common elements. 

The analysis can be qualitative, although quantitative evidence is clearly desirable.

The first deliverable is a preliminary draft after 2-4 weeks. The second deliverable is the final draft, due 2 months after the start of the project.

Expected completion time: 2 months. Successful completion of the project could also lead to further collaboration for students interested in writing their dissertation on related topics.

Interested candidates should send CV and cover letter explaining why they are interested and how they would tackle the project.

The European Commission currently finances 9 Joint Undertakings: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2021/11/19/council-commits-to-nine-institutionalised-european-partnerships/

The scope of this project is to examine their operations and governance. We want to answer two key sets of questions: 

1) What kind of projects do they finance? Are funds devoted to young firms? Do they finance high-tech projects or mature technologies? Do they fund research institutions? 

2) Who is responsible for selecting the projects? Are they members of the business community or scientists? Do their CV reflect adequate competences?

Expected completion time: 4-6 months. Successful completion of the project could also lead to further collaboration for students interested in writing their dissertation on related topics.

Interested candidates should send CV and cover letter explaining how they would tackle the project, providing details on each step and in what way they would codify the information in a manner suitable for quantitative analysis.

The Institute for European Policymaking @ Bocconi University (IEP) combines the analytic rigor of a research institute, the policy impact of a think tank, and the facts-based effort of raising public opinion’s awareness about Europe through outreach activities. Despite its young age, IEP’s work has had a strong influence in policymaking. One example is the recent Draghi report on competitiveness, where IEP’s work has been extensively cited.

We are looking for a graduate student in Economics, preferably close to completion of their PhD, to assist the IEP Director, Daniel Gros.

The successful candidate will be strongly interested in policy issues and have a good understanding of the functioning of the European Union. 

Tasks will include data collection, analysis and drafting on multiple themes in a timely manner, in line with the fast-changing policy environment in Brussels and abroad. 

The successful candidate is expected to co-author reports and policy briefs that are regularly published on IEP website, and possibly participate in related academic projects with a longer time horizon.

IEP values diversity and inclusion, and it especially encourages female candidates to apply.

Research Project: The postdoctoral researcher's activities will contribute to the Institute for European Policymaking @ Bocconi University's (IEP@BU) mission: conduct, debate and disseminate high quality research on the major policy issues facing the European Union in a rapidly changing world. In particular, the postdoctoral researcher will contribute to and complement the ongoing work on environmental issues conducted by researchers affiliated to IEP@BU, on topics such as: the exploration of socioecological transition scenarios that may unfold in the next years and decades; the development of appropriate tools and methodologies to assess the economic and financial implications of such scenarios; the assessment of potential responses that the EU and its Member States could develop in response to the vulnerabilities identified, in particular in the eventuality of an increasingly geoeconomically fragmented world.

Deadline: July 14 2024

- Her/his main duties shall entail:
- to contribute to an assessment of the work done at EU level (including directives/regulations adopted since 2019 on climate / nature conservation / deforestation), in order to produce a collective policy paper;
- to follow the ongoing debate / the future proposals of the EC on climate / transition / biodiversity, with a systematic monitoring of the debates in thinks tanks and media’s
- to contribute to the drafting of the policy paper.

We welcome applications from students from any area of research, law included. The contract would be of 6 months and the successful candidate will work closely with the Institute's Vice-President, Sylvie Goulard. Short listed candidates will be contacted for an interview with the research team.

The candidate is expected to be familiar with National Account statistics, industry/product classifications (e.g. NACE, ISIC, HS, etc.), and international trade data (e.g. Comtrade). Knowledge of Excel and data visualization skills in STATA, R or others are essential; modelling skills and/or Python are a plus.

Project: identifying the changes to the material Constitution of EU, deriving from the management of recent crisis (Immigration, pandemics, geopolitical challenges, included the war in Ukraine, the Euro crisis), with a focus on the EU Commission and European Council. The project is expected to put forward concrete reform proposals for European governance. DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JANUARY 9th, 2024!!!
> APPLY ONLINE<

Project: Building and development of the sustainability pillar of the Institute, in collaboration with the BU fellows and academia, with a focus on climate issues as well as nature related issues to shape the policy of IEP@BU. Production of research and policy papers on the European sustainability issues.

Project: Analysis of the factors that drive economic productivity, especially across EU. Special emphasis will be given to the implementation of policies deemed useful to boost intra EU productivity, especially if modeled around automation and innovation, peculiar features in the postpandemic world.
 

Project: Analysis, both from a policy evaluation and a policy modeling point of view of the connections between education, training and labor market, with a focus on intra-EU migration and school-to-work transition, taking into account the relevant factors that concern EU and it continuous integration.