No culture, no development

At what point is the revolution? On 19 February last, the cultural insert Domenica del Sole 24 Ore published a manifesto calling for ‘a Copernican revolution’ in the development-culture nexus, which had thousands of followers and sparked a national debate, earning the praise of President Giorgio Napolitano. Reactivating ‘the virtuous circle between learning, research, art, rights and work’ is the ambitious objective of the five points of the manifesto, which aim to promote human capital. Economists and scholars from the world of science and art take stock of the progress to date and examine what remains to be done.