Lecture: Economic Insecurity and Equality of Opportunity

This lecture is part of the Economic Insecurity: Causes, Consequences and Actions (EICCA) research project.

The lecture will take place with a networking reception. Registration is mandatory and open until 24 February 2026. To register, please contact karan.singhal@uni.lu

This is the second of two lectures. The first lecture will take place on 26 February 2026, from 12:00 to 15:00

About the lecture:

Traditionally, countries’ levels of development have been assessed using Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Over recent decades, however, the adequacy of this indicator has been increasingly challenged in both academic and policy debates. The main concern is that this monetary aggregate fails to capture distributive, non-monetary, and procedural dimensions of social achievement, thus providing only a partial assessment of development. The equality-of-opportunity perspective, grounded in a compelling conception of social justice that is particularly salient in contemporary societies, offers a promising framework for a more comprehensive evaluation of economic development.

These lectures will examine the normative foundations of the theory of (in)equality of opportunity, review the main interpretations of the equality-of-opportunity principle proposed in the literature, and present its formal and mathematical underpinnings. They will also survey recent empirical contributions to the measurement of inequality of opportunity in both monetary and non-monetary domains. Finally, the lectures will explore the implications of adopting an equality-of-opportunity framework for defining and measuring key social objectives, including economic development, economic stability and poverty eradication.

About the speaker:

Flaviana Palmisano is Associate Professor in Public Economics in the Department of Economics and Law at Sapienza University of Rome.