He is a Senior Member of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. He is also a Member of the International Network of Cambridge Industrial Innovation Policy (CIIP), Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge, and a Senior Research Associate of the Centre for Financial History, University of Cambridge.
He was the founding Scientific Director of the Institute for Advanced Study of the University of Bologna and founding Managing Editor of the journal 'Structural Change and Economic Dynamics' (SCED). His intellectual biography appeared in 'Makers of Modern Economics', vol. I, ed. A. Heertje, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993.
His primary areas of interest are the economic theory of production and structural economic dynamics. His research led him to investigate foundational aspects of production theory, and to address production structures as patterns of interdependencies determining the feasibility range of production processes.
He investigated the relationships between the structure and scale of production processes, the relationship between the specification of structural interdependencies and economic dynamics, and the interface between the economic, political, and policy domains.
He authored 'Efficienza produttiva e livelli di attività', 'Un contributo di teoria economica' (Bologna, Il Mulino, 1981), 'A Theory of Production', 'Tasks, Processes and Technical Practices' (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993) and co-authored 'The Constitution of Political Economy'. Polity, Society and the Common Weal (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2023).
He co-edited 'Dinamica economica strutturale' (Bologna, Il Mulino, 1990), 'The Economic Theory of Structure and Change' (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990), 'Production and Economic Dynamics' (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 1996), 'The Economics of Structural Change', 3 volumes (Cheltenham and Northampton, E. Elgar, 2003), 'Resources, Production and Structural Dynamics' (Cambridge, University Press, 2015), 'The Political Economy of the Eurozone' (Cambridge University Press, 2017), 'The Palgrave Handbook of Political Economy' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
His recent research also appeared or is forthcoming in the Cambridge Journal of Economics, Constitutional Political Economy, Economia Politica, Oeconomia, History of Political Economy, Kyklos, L’industria, National Institute Economic Review, Networks and Spatial Economics, Revue d’économie industrielle, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics.
He recently co-edited the special issues ‘Frontiers of Industrial Policy’ (Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 2019), ‘Vulnerability, Resilience and Complexity in Socioeconomic Systems: A Connectivity Approach’ (Networks and Spatial Economics, 2022), and ‘Frontiers in Complex Spatial Networks: The Power of Theory’ (Networks and Spatial Economics, 2024).
His current work explores key concepts of structural economic analysis such as the criterion of relative structural invariance, the possibility of alternative specifications of economic structure, and the implications of structural and connectivity analysis for the dynamics and political economy of production.
