Prof. Dr. Martina Viarengo 2015

 

It has been a wonderful experience to serve as a Swiss Scholar at the Wilson Center, and a great honor. I am very grateful to the Europa Institute for offering me this opportunity.

I really enjoyed my stay. Being at Wilson has meant being part of an extremely dynamic and forward-looking policy-oriented research environment, and being surrounded by enthusiastic members of the Staff and Scholars committed to address some of the most pressing global challenges. I was impressed by the breadth of scope of the Center’s Programs and Initiatives, the number of high-profile events and seminars organized every week. In addition to this, being in Washington has allowed me to interact with colleagues at the IMF, Brookings and the World Bank, as well as to observe the different dimensions of U.S. policy-making.

Moreover, the intellectually stimulating environment has made my stay very productive. I benefited from getting access to historical sources and archives at the Library of Congress, and made good progress on a research project on the long-run consequences of large-scale migratory flows.  In addition to this, I completed a book on the role of education policy and other interventions in preventing youth unemployment.

More importantly, my stay has allowed me to better understand what President Wilson envisioned as a “living memorial” and what he referred to, when on an earlier occasion he mentioned that [we] “are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement”.

 

 

M. Viarengo [joint with L. Pritchett] (2015), “The State, Socialization and Private Schooling: When Will Governments Support Alternative Producers?” Journal of Development Studies, (lead article), Vol. 51, No. 7, July, pp. 784-807; [Harvard University, Center for International Development Working Paper No. 272]

 

M. Viarengo [joint with F. Kramarz] (2015), “Ni en Emploi Ni en Formation – Des Jeunes Laissés pour Compte,” Paris: Sciences-Po Press

The book has recently been reviewed in Le Monde