This Selected Issues paper focuses on economic challenges and options for overcoming the demographic drag in Italy. Italy has large catch-up potential to help overcome the demographic drag on output, but fundamental changes are needed to shift from the current suboptimal equilibrium. On numerous...

The 2023 Article IV Consultation highlights that the Italian economy has weathered well the effects of Russia's war in Ukraine, growing by 3.7 percent in 2022. Private consumption rose robustly on recovery in employment, buoyant tourism, and extensive fiscal support of real purchasing power....

GDP has fully recovered from the pandemic crisis, but government debt has risen to very high levels. The war in Ukraine triggered a surge in energy prices and the prospect of monetary policy tightening caused government bond yields to rise sharply. Implementation of the National Recovery and...

Leveraging a major Italian reform enacted in June 2012 that eroded employment protection to workers on permanent contracts, we use detailed administrative data to estimate how this reduction affected the cost of job loss. We employ a stacked-by-event research design, which compares workers...