Publications
IEP@BU Publication Policy
The Institute for European Policymaking (IEP@BU) publishes a range of content formats to advance rigorous, policy-relevant research and foster informed public debate on European affairs. Our publications—authored by IEP fellows, affiliated researchers, and external contributors—reflect the Institute’s commitment to analytical depth, relevance, and independence.
Types of Publications
● IEP produces and disseminates the following categories of content:
● Commentaries (max. 900 words): Short opinion pieces on timely policy debates, published under the responsibility of the Director and Communications Advisor.
● Interviews with policymakers, scholars, and thought leaders.
● Event-related content: Includes event presentations, slide decks, and videos
● Policy Briefs: Policy-oriented documents comprising an executive summary and a full-length PDF, offering actionable insights and recommendations.
● Working Papers: Original research products developed within IEP-supervised or funded projects.
● Co-authored Reports: Collaborative publications with external institutions on major policy issues.
Approval and Editorial Process
IEP’s editorial process balances academic freedom with internal quality control. The following procedures apply:
● Commentaries, interviews, and event-related content are reviewed by the Director with the support of the Communications Advisor.
● Policy Briefs and Working Papers: The Director approves the publication after an internal review process that includes soliciting feedback and comments from the full Managing Board, and occasionally from IEP fellows with subject-matter expertise.
● Reports are long-term projects pre-approved by the Managing Board and supervised by the Director or another Board member throughout their development.
Definitions
● A Working Paper is a research product that originates from a project initiated, funded, or supervised by IEP. It reflects IEP authorship and resource investment, and typically includes at least one internal presentation to the IEP community during its development or prior to publication.
● A Policy Brief is a concise, policy-focused publication designed to inform public discussion or decision-making. It includes a stand-alone executive summary and a full document in PDF format. Policy Briefs may be discussed in digital or hybrid events, either before or after publication.
● A Report is a digital publication co-authored by IEP fellows and members of other research institutions. Reports address major issues in the European policy debate that require a comprehensive approach, and they offer a broad set of policy recommendations.
If you want to submit a commentary or a proposal for a Policy Brief or other projects, please write to iep@unibocconi.it
2023
American protectionism has been reinvented in the name of “national security”. Yet, the belief that a country can achieve its own “nationally security” unilaterally is debatable.
Given the common monetary policy in Europe, term premia on bonds issued by different countries are an immediate gauge of the heterogeneity in the transmission mechanism of monetary policy in Europe and of the need for intervention to protect the Euro area against it.
The dynamics of nominal government bond yields at different maturities play a central role in shaping the response of the real economy to monetary and fiscal policy interventions. Yields can be decomposed into two unobservable components: the sequence of expected one-period rates and the term-premia.
So much international trade happens in dollars that it would be very difficult to turn the tide against the currency any time soon.
If Russia's invasion and assault on Ukraine can be unequivocally classified as aggression, then the response to this violation must also adhere to international legal standards.
A concise introduction into the workings of large language models is presented. We start with an introduction to the attention mechanism, the core of the transformer architecture, which is then followed by a discussion of the steps needed to engineer the base model, a generatively pretrained transfromers (GPT), to a working chatbot like ChatGPT.
“You can do some pretty impressive things with AI as a technological platform, but I am not necessarily an optimist because there are also some very negative paths that AI could take as a technology. We have a confluence of factors that make the negative use of this technology much more probable than positive use”, MIT economist Daron Acemoglu argues.
Il dibattito sulla riforma del Meccanismo Europeo di Stabilità (MES) - che l’Italia rimane l’unico Paese UE a non avere ratificato - è tornato al centro del dibattito politico italiano. All’interno della maggioranza di governo sembrano coesistere due linee di opposizione alla ratifica – una “ideologica” e una “strategica”. Entrambe sono fallaci.
2015
Italy’s economy is set to grow more slowly than almost all its eurozone peers in 2025, with only Austria, Finland and Germany posting weaker figures — although the latter are expected to recover in 2026. A commentary by Lorenzo Bini Smaghi
