Luigi Zingales: belief

Transcript context

…So a European-wide electorate? We vote somebody that can decide something. We elect a parliament that has not the real power to appoint a prime minister, to appoint somebody, and nobody really responds to the European people. I think that an injection of democracy is what is most needed, and hopefully all the tension, will emerge. If you want to be optimistic, like I want to be, the United States did not have an easy route. As I said at the beginning, there was a lot of tension and there was a civil war. Hopefully, in Europe, we already fought the civil war — two — in the last century, so we don’t want any more of that. The fact that the process is not linear is inevitable. The fact that there are tensions and bumps is inevitable. The important thing is at least you see the right direction, and this is what sometimes I’m not so sure that everybody sees. I think the right direction is more democracy. Last question before we open up to the crowd. You’re now director of the Stigler Center in Chicago, and you’ve studied organizations for your whole career. Given what you’ve learned — we’re here, of course, at the Mercatus Center hosting this event — but how will this shape what you will do with the Stigler Center, as an economist?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.