Dr. Marcello Graziano
Department of Management & International Business
Southern Connecticut State University

This seminar will analyze the evolution of the Blue Economy as one of the pivotal regional development paradigms. After a brief review of the Blue Economy, the talk will focus on the economic size and resilience of five established definitions of the Blue Economy across two geographical locations: Scotland (UK) and Michigan (USA). The work presented will analyze sector-level employment, labor productivity and Gross Value Added (GVA) data, and uses graphical representations to highlight the differences in conceptualizing the Blue Economy in ways that affect its weight and contribution to regional economies. Further, it analyses how each definition has fared in the post-2007/2011 crisis, assessing their resilience. Finally, a discussion of the emerging discourse around the Blue Economy by highlighting its regional character, and by problematizing the divergent definitions of the concept.

Dr. Marcello Graziano is Associate Professor in the Department of Management and International Business at Southern Connecticut State University, and Associate Director of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis at the University of Connecticut. An Economic and Energy Geographer, Dr. Graziano's research focuses primarily on sustainable transition processes, regional growth and economic modeling, energy and resilience, and the care economy.

You are invited to the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (HBL 4-209) on March 30, at 12:30PM to attend a talk by Carl Wennerlind, Professor of History at Barnard, on his new book on the history of capitalism: Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis (Harvard UP, 2023).