Dr Michele Palladino

Dr Michele Palladino is an economist and project manager with more than 10 years of experience in academia and the consulting sector. He is an expert in development and industrial economics, with a focus on science, technology and innovation policy, including Industry 4.0, national systems of innovation, industry structural analysis, and industrial strategies. As Senior Policy Analyst, he provides economics expertise to all Policy Links projects and manages technical and financial proposals for international donors.

Michele has been the lead economist on several reports produced by Policy Links, with a focus on Industry 4.0 as well as the impact of emerging digital technologies on the economy in countries such as Brazil, Cambodia, Ireland, Jamaica, Oman, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United Kingdom.

In his role as a project manager, he spent several months in Jakarta, at the Asian Development Bank’s Indonesia Resident Mission, where he was the team leader of the project “Supporting Technological Transformation in Indonesia”, involving a group of more than 15 experts across the University of Cambridge. The study explores policy options to facilitate Indonesia’s technological transformation and unlock its economic growth potential, and was supported by 13 background papers, developed in collaboration with researchers from Indonesia’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), that describe key technologies driving change globally and discuss the implications for Indonesia.

Before joining Policy Links, he worked as a consultant economist for a leading economics and environmental consultancy based in the UK, where he managed a number of projects for the UK government and the European Commission, focusing on European policy evaluation, industry sector analysis, and chemicals regulation. Michele has also worked in consulting roles in Italy and Brazil on designing, monitoring and evaluating projects in the SMEs manufacturing and agribusiness sectors mainly funded by international organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank and the OECD-LEED Programme.

Michele holds a PhD in Production and Development Economics from the University of Insubria (Italy), and an MSc in Development Economics from the University of Sussex. A native Italian speaker, he is also fluent in Portuguese.

After office hours, he dedicates his time to playing the piano, recreating popular film scores, reading sci-fi, and enjoining an aperitivo with friends.