 She has described herself as very left wing in her youth, even attending Italian Communist Party meetings (although the communists made fun of her for arriving in an Alfa Romeo Giulia sports car).After graduating from Milan's Bocconi University in Economics she went to the United States where she earned a graduate degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1968.Of her experience in the US she said "I came back more of a [classical] liberal, more convinced that overall welfare is maximized by people seeking their own individual well being".