9 - 13 June 2025

Economic Fitness & Complexity

summer ScHOOL 2025
THIRD edition

ENRICO FERMI RESEARCH CENTER 

(Rome, Italy)

A five-day Summer school on economic fitness and complexity for phd students, early career researchers, and practitioners


Organised by Enrico Fermi Research Centre (CREF, Rome), UNU-MERIT (Maastricht), UNU-CRIS (Bruges) and the Young Scholar Initiative (YSI-INET)


An extensive introduction to the economic complexity framework, with theoretical and practical classes, and presentations of state-of-art applications of economic complexity methods in different areas of social sciences


TOPICS

Using complexity analysis for...

Economic Development and Growth

Predicting trajectories of economic development, relying on various sources of data, from co-locations to machine-learning approaches

Economic Geography and Labour

Studying local labour markets, labour flows, skill relatedness, job complexity and geographical patterns of inequality and resilience 

Firm Dynamics


Mapping firm capabilities, creating new indicators of relatedness and diversification for understanding firm dynamics

Policy


Informing policy: an overview of the applications at key institutional players suche as the European Commission and at the World Bank Group

Sustainability

Identifying new pathways to a fair and just sustainability transition: the geography of green competitiveness, inequality, green technologies and policies 

Science and Innovation

Understanding micro and macro patterns of co-evolution of science and technology to provide insights on the national, regional and local innovation systems  

oVERVIEW

Courses and labs

The first three days of the school will focus on theoretical and practical classes covering the following topics: economic complexity measurement, network theory, machine learning, measurement of relatedness. Theoretical lectures will be followed by coding labs, where participants will apply the methodologies introduced in class to carry on assigned group projects. 

PRESENTATIONS

In the last day of the school, world-wide renowned scholars have been invited to present their frontier research, linking economic complexity with economic development, economic geography, labour economics, sustainability, economics of science, and innovation policy. At the end of the school, students will also get a chance to present their group projects, and to get feedback on them.

SOCIAL ACTIVITIES

Speakers

Luca Bonamico

Sector economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)

Filippo Bontadini

Assistant Professor in Applied Economics at Luiss University 

Masud Cader

Country Analytics Lead at International Finance Corporation – World Bank

Bernardo Caldarola

Researcher at UNU-MERIT, United Nations University

Lorenzo Ciari

Director at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)

Clovis Freire

Head of the Commodities Branch of the Division on International Trade and Commodities of UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD)

Nanditha Mathew

Research Fellow at UNU - MERIT, United Nations University

Dario Mazzilli

Researcher at CREF

Frank Neffke

Team leader Science of Cities at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna

Aurelio Patelli

Researcher at CREF

Luciano Pietronero

Full Professor at the Physics Department, La Sapienza University of Rome

Emanuele Pugliese

Research Fellow at UNU - MERIT, United Nations University

Angelica Sbardella

Researcher at CREF and Research Associate at SOAS-University of London

Andrea Tacchella

Researcher at CREF

Fabiana Visentin

Assistant Professor of Economics of Innovation at UNU-MERIT, United Nations University

Andrea Zaccaria

Researcher at Institute of Complex Systems – CNR

The Venue

Enrico Fermi Research Centre

Via Panisperna 89a,
00184 Roma, Italia

The Historical Museum of Physics and Enrico Fermi Study and Research Center (CREF) is located in the same building where Enrico Fermi and a group of young physicists conducted the first experiments on neutron-induced radioactivity, fundamental for the future development of nuclear energy.

Following the inspirational lead of Enrico Fermi, CREF aims to develop original and high-impact research lines based on physical methods with a strong interdisciplinary character. Here physicists collaborate on a daily basis with specialists in various fields: artificial intelligence, biology, medicine, social sciences, and  economics.

CREF also hosts a modern Historical Museum of Physics dedicated to Fermi’s scientific legacy,  to offer wide dissemination and communication of his life and his discoveries.

APPLY

 Fill in the application form here:

organisers