The Euro Area’s Achilles Heel: Reassessing Italy’s Long Decline in the Context of European Integration and Globalisation
By: Guarascio, Dario.
Contributor(s): Heimberger, Philipp | Zezza, Francesco.
Material type:
BookSeries: wiiw Research Reports: 470Publisher: Wien : Wiener Institut für Internationale Wirtschaftsvergleiche (wiiw), 2023Description: 41 S., 4 Tables and 7 Figures, 30cm.Subject(s): Italy | decline | euro area | crisisCountries covered: European Union | Italywiiw Research Areas: Macroeconomic Analysis and PolicyClassification: E65 | P16 | F45 | F62 Online resources: Click here to access online Summary: This paper analyses how Italy’s decades-long decline turned the country into the euro area’s Achilles heel, the most vulnerable spot in the common currency. We use a structuralist framework to synthesise different (competing) supply-side and demand-side explanations, accounting for long-term processes and sectoral interdependencies. We argue that structural domestic factors that were already present in the decades after World War II (‘original sins’) – low-cost competition and labour fragmentation, many small firms linked to low innovation, and a deep territorial divide – interacted with the policy constraints brought about by globalisation and European integration to exacerbate Italy’s decline vis-à-vis its euro area peers.
| Cover image | Item type | Current library | Home library | Collection | Shelving location | Call number | Materials specified | Vol info | URL | Copy number | Status | Notes | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | Item hold queue priority | Course reserves | |
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| Paper | WIIW Library | 5.600/470 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Available | 1000010006622 |
This paper analyses how Italy’s decades-long decline turned the country into the euro area’s Achilles heel, the most vulnerable spot in the common currency. We use a structuralist framework to synthesise different (competing) supply-side and demand-side explanations, accounting for long-term processes and sectoral interdependencies. We argue that structural domestic factors that were already present in the decades after World War II (‘original sins’) – low-cost competition and labour fragmentation, many small firms linked to low innovation, and a deep territorial divide – interacted with the policy constraints brought about by globalisation and European integration to exacerbate Italy’s decline vis-à-vis its euro area peers.
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