Fausto Panunzi is Full Professor of Economics at Bocconi University, where he has been teaching since 2015. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and previously held academic positions as Professor at the University of Bologna, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at IDEI Toulouse, and Visiting Lecturer at the Department of Economics, University College London.
His research interests lie in political economy, organizational economics, corporate governance, and contract theory. He is a Research Fellow at the CEPR (Centre for Economic Policy Research), the European Corporate Governance Institute, and the Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research (IGIER).
He has published influential works on topics such as Legal Investment Protection and Takeovers, Inheritance Law and Investment in Family Firms, Tender Offers and Leverage, as well as studies on the effects of shareholder control and legal protection on market outcomes.
In teaching, he currently offers courses in Microeconomics (undergraduate), “Incentives Design and Policy,” and “The Modern Firm: Boundaries, Resources, and Responsibilities” for the 2025/2026 academic year. He has also taught Corporate Finance at the PhD level at the Università della Svizzera Italiana (Lugano).
He is the author of several working papers on economic shocks, populism, and reference-dependent preferences, and actively participates in international academic networks and conferences.