Lorenzo Forni
Welcome to my personal website!
I am Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Padua, Head of the Prometeia Think Tank, and since 2025 Vice President of the Senior Board of the Conselho das Finanças Públicas (CFP), Portugal’s independent fiscal council.
Previously, I worked at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. (2010–2016) and at the Bank of Italy in Rome. I have collaborated with the OECD and the World Bank and served on the advisory committee of Confindustria, the Italian employers’ association.
I hold a Master’s degree in Political Economy (1999) and a Ph.D. in Economics (2001) from Boston University and was a visiting scholar at Harvard University and the National Bureau of Economic Research (2005–06).
I am the author of The Magic Money Tree and Other Economic Tales (2021), and Preventing the Greenlash - How to Overcome Opposition to Green Policies (2024).
For a complete list of publications and working papers, please see my CV.
news
| June 2026 | New working paper draft completed: When Stablecoins Meet Treasury Scarcity — Global Spillovers from Dollar Settlement. The paper develops a two-country DSGE model of how USD-stablecoin settlement, backed by a scarce supply of short-term US Treasuries, opens a new channel of international macroeconomic spillovers. Read the draft |
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| June 2026 | Will present Prometeia’s Quarterly Economic Outlook (Rapporto di Previsione) on the Italian and global economy on July 2 2026 — an update on growth, inflation, and geopolitical risks against a backdrop of elevated uncertainty. |
| May 2026 | Interview with ItalyPost on why economic forecasts of Italian GDP have often been imprecise since 2021, and how to read them as conditional scenarios rather than crystal balls. |