Italy's overall GDP growth has been dismal in recent years and this poor performance has been compounded by a declining trend in productivity growth. This paper looks into growth accounting and structural indicators and analyses Italy's performance against other European countries. We look at...

We provide evidence that the movements in yield differentials between euro zone government bonds explained by changes in international risk factors – as measured by banking and corporate risk premiums in the United States – are more pronounced for bonds issued by Italy and Spain. Liquidity...

"The book draws lessons on the importance of rewarding merit for economic growth by analysing Italy's decline in the past few decades. Connections rather than merit are a long-standing feature of the Italian elites, even in the corporate sector. This became a significant problem when Italy could...

Using a representative panel of manufacturing firms, we estimate the response of job and hours worked to currency swings, showing that it depends primarily on firms' exposure to foreign sales and their reliance on imported inputs. We also show that, for a given international exposure, the...

A shift in the design of labor compensation occurred at around the mid-1980s in the U.S. and deals with an increased role of performance pay in driving the cyclical movements of wages. Using a DSGE model we show that this structural change accounts at least qualitatively for many observed...

type="main" xml:id="twec12200-abs-0001" <title type="main">Abstract</title> <p>We estimate the effect of exchange rate movements on firm-level wages, using a representative panel of Italian manufacturing firms. We show that the direction and size of wage adjustment is shaped by the international exposure of each firm on both...</p>

In this paper, we provide a description of the Italian Treasury Econometric Model (ITEM). We illustrate its general structure and model properties, especially with regard to the economy's response to changes in policy and in other dimensions of the economic environment. One of the key features...