Italy’s overall GDP growth has been dismal in recent years and this poor performance has been compounded by a declining trend in labour productivity and total factor productivity growth. This paper looks into growth accounting and structural indicators and analyses Italy’s performance...

This paper focuses on two apparent puzzles for the Italian economy: i) How can an extremely poor performance in productivity growth be compatible with strong employment growth?; and ii) How can a sharp decline in competitiveness come along with higher export prices and a general situation for...

"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...