Position/Role

Full Professor of Economics and Business Management at the University of Pisa. Member of the Coordination Committee, National Doctorate in Sustainable Development and Climate Change, at University School for Advanced Studies (IUSS) of Pavia.

Professional career

After graduating, she obtained a Ph.D. in business and economics at the University of Pisa in 2003, and a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Policy at the SPRU, University of Sussex (UK) in 2005. She was Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in 2004, and ESRC Post-Doctoral Fellow at SPRU in 2005-2006. She moved to the University of Pisa in 2006, where she became Full Professor in 2016, when she founded the REMARC -Responsible Management Research Center of which she is now director. She has been Visiting Professor at the University of Lund (2016), the MIT Sloan School of Management (2017-2018) and Bocconi University (2019-2020).  

Scientific results

Elisa Giuliani's research activity lies at the interface of business studies and sustainable development. She is interested in understanding how business activity impacts on society and the economic systems. One line of research concerns the economics of innovation and the technological catching up of companies in developing countries, and the research carried out in this area has concerned industrial districts, multinational companies, and global value chains. She has recently been interested in the impacts of technological innovation on society and the environment, working on a project for measuring the potential toxicity of inventions, using computational chemistry methodologies to predict the toxic content of industrial patents. A second and more recent area of ​​interest concerns business, human rights and corporate social responsibility. Her research in this area is aimed at measuring and studying the causes of organizational wrongdoing. She has been Principal Investigator (PI) of national and international projects, and is currently PI of a Horizon Europe project on the subject of enterprise and democracy.

Editorial work and publications

Elisa Giuliani is editor of Research Policy and member of the editorial board of the journals: Journal of Economic Geography, Economic Geography, Business and Human Rights Journal.

She is the author of numerous publications, including:

2022) Balland P.A., Broekel T., Diodato D., Giuliani E., Hausmann R., O’Clery N., Rigby D. The New Paradigm of Economic Complexity, Research Policy, 51 (3), 104450.

(2022) Biggi G., Giuliani E., Martinelli A., Benfenati E. Patent Toxicity, Research Policy, 51 (1), 104329.

(2021) Giuliani E., Jaqueminet A., Nieri F. Bringing Light to Dark Spots: The Case of Cross-border Bioprospecting, in Castellani D., Perri A., Scalera V., Zanfei A. (eds.), Cross-Border Innovation in a Changing World, Oxford University Press.

(2019) Wettstein F., Giuliani E., Santangelo G., Stahl G.   International Business and Human Rights: A research agenda, Journal of World Business, 54 (1): 54-65.

(2019) Giuliani E., Balland P.A., Matta A. Straining but not thriving: Understanding network dynamics in underperforming industrial clusters, Journal of Economic Geography, 19 (1): 147-172. 

(2018) Amendolagine V., Giuliani E., Martinelli A., Rabellotti R. Chinese and Indian MNEs’ shopping sprees in advanced countries. How good is it for their innovation output? Journal of Economic Geography, 18 (5): 1149–1176.

(2017) Giuliani E. Ciravegna L. Vezzulli A., Kilian B.  Decoupling standards from practice: The impact of in-house certifications on coffee farms’ environmental and social conduct, World Development, 96: 294–314. 

(2017) Fiaschi D., Giuliani E., Nieri F.  Overcoming the liability of origin by doing no harm. Assessing emerging country firms’ social irresponsibility as they go global, Journal of World Business, 52 (4): 546- 563.

(2014) Giuliani E., Macchi C. Multinational Corporations' Economic and Human Rights Impacts on Developing Countries: A Review and Research Agenda, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 38 (2): 479-517. 

(2013) Giuliani E.  Network dynamics in regional clusters: Evidence from Chile, Research Policy, 42 (8): 1406-1419.

(2005) Giuliani E., Pietrobelli C., Rabellotti R.   Upgrading in global value chains: Lessons from Latin American clusters. World Development 33(4): 549-573.

(2005) Giuliani E., Bell M. The micro-determinants of meso-level learning and innovation: evidence from a Chilean wine cluster. Research Policy 34(1): 47-68.

Awards and prizes

Elisa Giuliani is a Fellow of the Regional Studies Association (RSA), and received the RSA MERSA Award in 2017. During her career she has been recipient of several awards (e.g. 2020 Highly Commended Paper Emerald Literati Awards; 2014 Danny van den Bulcke Prize for Best Paper- European Academy of International Business; 2005 The Druid Young Scholar Best Paper Award - Copenhagen Business School). She has been invited to give keynote lectures at various conferences, including RSAI-GSSI in 2021; Druid Academy in 2017; European Meeting of Applied Evolutionary Economics, MERIT in Maastricht in 2015, among others.