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...

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...