We measure the share of foreign value added embedded in the domestic consumption expenditure of the Italian household sector as a whole and of households along the distribution of consumption expenditure. We find that for each euro spent for consumption by households, almost irrespective of...

We investigate the role of cyclical factors in the adjustment of Italy's external balance from 2010, developing a model that infers the potential levels of domestic demand and of imports and exports from an exogenous measure of potential output, in an internally coherent fashion and also taking...

We provide an in-depth analysis of Italy's export performance relative to the other main euro-area countries over the last two decades, using both macro and micro data. We argue that the relatively unsatisfactory performance of Italian goods exports until the eve of the 2008-09 crisis is the...