Italian Industry and Productivity. Going Beyond the Mainstream View

Italian manufacturing steadily ranks seventh in the world for value added, fourth for production diversification and second for export competitiveness, and has a higher investment rate than its main European competitors, including Germany. However, it is also characterized by a long-lasting weak real productivity growth. Can these facts be reconciled? How reliable are constant price growth estimates for cross-country comparisons? Is the economic interpretation of these estimates so obvious? What are the policy implications? These issues are discussed in detail in the paper