A Self Made Man Leading the PhD School

EXPERT IN GAME THEORY, PIERPAOLO BATTIGALLI TELLS US ABOUT HIMSELF. HE HAS BEEN CONFIRMED AS DEAN OF THE PHD SCHOOL

He calls himself a self-made man and he is proud of having set out on an original research path. Pierpaolo Battigalli choose autonomously the subject of his thesis, while his colleagues at the Economics and Social Disciplines degree course were writing theses assigned by their supervisors. “I found references to game theory in some readings and I studied it by myself. I wasn’t interested in knowing how to win at poker. I thought it was an essential tool when it comes to explain social events. I ended up writing a thesis that was actually a research thesis”.
 
Battigalli is now Full Professor at the Department of Decision Sciences and has been confirmed as Dean of the PhD School in the team of new Rector Gianmario Verona. His interest in economics and social sciences came out during high school. “It was the tail end of the ’68 movement. I was involved in politics in my high school, the Vittorio Veneto in Milan. Being liberal caused me some trouble and I risked being beaten up several times. However, that was the spark that ignited my interest in social sciences”.
 
Upon graduating, a scholarship took him to the London School of Economics where he met one of the world's greatest figures in game theory, Ariel Rubinstein. “He asked me where did I want to go: Princeton, Harvard, MIT? I was married and scared. I was one of those kids that parents oblige to go to England and they kiss the ground when they return to Italy. So I came back to Milan to a joint Bocconi-Cattolica-Statale PhD in Economics. I never regretted it”. His former classmates boasted illustrious PhD programs, but thanks to his research activity he could show recommendation letters by three of the best scholars of game theory in the world: Rubinstein, David Kreps and Drew Fudenberg.
 
In Princeton and Milan his research area extended to Contracts and Decision Theory. “I came back to Bocconi in 2000, just in time to take part in the process of transformation from a teaching institution to a research and teaching institution with an international profile. Now, the biggest challenge is to bring our doctoral programs to the level of excellence achieved by the faculty”.
 
 

by Claudio Todesco