Prof. Lino Briguglio, who is the former Head of the Economics Department and of the Banking and Finance Department at the University of Malta, and is now a Professor within the Islands and Small States Institute at the University, has been invited to deliver a keynote speech at the annual symposium of the Swiss Academic Association on Research and Teaching of Economics and Finance (AREF).
The symposium titled Resilience for a post-pandemic economy Lessons, challenges and opportunities will be held on Thursday 28 October in Fribourg, Switzerland. The event will be hybrid, allowing both face-to-face as well as virtual presentations.
Professor Briguglio鈥檚 speech will be about multidimensional resilience building for economic success. Lino Briguglio is well known internationally for his publications on vulnerability and resilience, associating resilience with good governance in its various aspects. The resilience index developed by Prof. Briguglio and his research associates at the Island and Small States Institute of the University of Malta is multidimensional, covering political, social, economic and environmental governance.
The main implication of this research is that countries that are highly exposed to adverse external shocks can attain economic success if they adopt policies that enable them to build resilience in order to cope with such shocks. In his research, Briguglio argues that there are countries which are not highly exposed to adverse external shocks and are endowed with natural resources, but perform badly economically due to weak governance. Conversely there are countries, which are highly vulnerable to external shocks, that due to policy-induced measures, succeed economically. These implications can explain why many small states, most of which are poorly endowed with natural resources, and highly exposed to external shocks, manage to attain upper-middle-income and high-income status, as classified by the World Bank.
