Political Economist Lucio Baccaro Turns Sixty
The political economist Pasquale V. (Lucio) Baccaro celebrates his sixtieth birthday on March 29. The Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne will honor its director with an academic conference on May 22, which will reflect on his work to date in the fields of industrial relations, research on governance, and the growth models approach.
Baccaro’s research lies at the intersection of international and comparative political economy. His research at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG) centers on the key mechanisms driving growth in different economic systems, as well as the complex role of political institutions and social actors in this process. Lucio Baccaro’s work on the political and institutional foundations of aggregate demand has had a lasting impact on the recent scholarly discourse and made a significant contribution to research on the growth models approach. This analytical approach in comparative political economy examines how different countries develop and implement diverse economic growth strategies. The collection of essays “Diminishing Returns: The New Politics of Growth and Stagnation,” which he edited together with Jonas Pontusson and Mark Blyth, was published by Oxford University Press in 2022. Baccaro’s current research focuses on economic policy coordination in the eurozone.
Lucio Baccaro was born on March 29, 1966, in Alberobello, southern Italy. He began his academic career by studying philosophy at the University of Rome. After graduating, he decided to pursue his studies further in the field of business administration and political science, including research stays at leading international academic institutions. He was awarded a doctorate in labor law and industrial relations from the University of Pavia in Italy in 1997 and a PhD in management and political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1999. After further years of research at MIT and the International Labour Organization (ILO), he was appointed professor of sociology at the University of Geneva in Switzerland in 2009. In 2017, the Max Planck Society appointed him as a director of the MPIfG in Cologne, succeeding Wolfgang Streeck. Baccaro has now led the Institute for nine years together with the economic sociologist Jens Beckert.
Lucio Baccaro has been an honorary professor at the University of Geneva since 2020 and an honorary professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen since 2023. From 2002 to 2011, he was an Executive Council Member of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), and since 2017 he has been a member of the Executive Council of SASE’s Industrial Relations and Political Economy Network. From 2013 to 2016, he was coeditor of the British Journal of Industrial Relations. He currently serves, among others, on the editorial boards of the journals Social Forces and Economie et statistique, as well as on the International Advisory Board of the Italian Political Science Review.
Selected Publications
Barta, Zsófia, Lucio Baccaro, and Alison Johnston. 2025. “Signaling Virtue or Vulnerability? The Changing Impact of EMU on Government Bond Spreads.” Socio-Economic Review 23 (3): 1467–509.
Baccaro, Lucio, and Massimo D'Antoni. 2024. "Tying Your Hands and Getting Stuck? The European Origins of Italy's Economic Stagnation." Review of Political Economy 36 (3): 1104–29.
Baccaro, Lucio, and Sinisa Hadziabdic. 2024. "Operationalizing Growth Models." Quality & Quantity 58 (2): 1325–60.
Baccaro, Lucio, Björn Bremer, and Erik Neimanns. 2023. "Strategic Interdependence and Preferences for Debt Mutualization in the Eurozone." Review of International Political Economy 30 (4): 1459–85.
Baccaro, Lucio, Mark Blyth, and Jonas Pontusson, eds. 2022. Diminishing Returns: The New Politics of Growth and Stagnation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Baccaro, Lucio, and Jonas Pontusson. 2022. "The Politics of Growth Models." Review of Keynesian Economics 10 (2): 204–21.
Baccaro, Lucio, and Erik Neimanns. 2022. "Who Wants Wage Moderation? Trade Exposure, Export-Led Growth, and the Irrelevance of Bargaining Structure." West European Politics 45 (6): 1257–82.
Armingeon, Klaus, and Lucio Baccaro. 2021. "Political Economy of the Sovereign Debt Crisis: The Limits of Internal Devaluation." Industrial Law Journal 41 (3): 254–75.
Baccaro, Lucio, and Chiara Benassi. 2017. "Throwing Out the Ballast: Growth Models and the Liberalization of German Industrial Relations." Socio-Economic Review 15 (1): 85–115.
Baccaro, Lucio, and Chris Howell. 2017. Trajectories of Neoliberal Transformation: European Industrial Relations Since the 1970s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Baccaro, Lucio, and Jonas Pontusson. 2016. "Rethinking Comparative Political Economy: The Growth Model Perspective." Politics & Society 44 (2): 175–207.
Baccaro, Lucio. 2003. "What Is Alive and What Is Dead in the Theory of Corporatism." British Journal of Industrial Relations 41 (4): 683–706.
