Luigi Zingales: evaluation

Transcript context

…We come back full circle to Italy. [laughter] You actually raise an excellent point. My wife, who is American, walked into an Autogrill in Italy. She’s amazed by the fact that the guy speaks perfect English. She said, “Much better than yours.” [laughter] She discovered that this guy has a university degree in English literature, and he was serving coffee at the Autogrill. I think that’s pretty depressing. That’s maybe the reason why Italian café are so good is because there are not a lot of opportunities. Actually, I have this line, again, comparing the United States and Italy. I notice that in Italy, on average, that the personal assistants are great, are really fantastic, and managers are not that good. [laughter] I said, “Wait a minute. Why is that the case?” Obviously, because the market doesn’t work. If you don’t sort out the market, you can have some very talented people doing jobs that generally don’t require the talent, and you have, unfortunately, non‑talented people doing jobs that require a lot of talent. My favorite line that did not make me very popular in Italy — Italy is the country with the best secretaries and the worst managers. [laughter] On that, three announcements to close. First, big round of thanks for Luigi. Next, September 24th is Dani Rodrik. Finally, Luigi will be outside signing books. He has three books. Any book you bring, he will sign. Luigi, thank you again. A great honor and pleasure to have you.…

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