The role of ICT and Business Services in Italy

This paper studies the role played by ICT in affecting the efficiency of business services (BS) industry, using a structural disequilibrium model of the Italian economy. The Italian BS sector presents a peculiar dynamics (compared to other EU countries) in that, after initially improving its efficiency by adopting ICT, from the early 90s it stagnated. Our estimates suggest that this anomaly can be traced back to a structural deficiency in absorbing new technologies. Our contribution adds to the explanations of the slowdown of the Italian productivity.