IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bdi/opques/qef_825_23.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A structural analysis of productivity in Italy: a cross-industry, cross-country perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Rosalia Greco

    (Bank of Italy)

Abstract

Since 2000, Italy's output growth lagged behind countries like Germany, France, and Spain, primarily due to weak labor productivity dynamics. Italy's labor productivity growth, especially low before the Great Recession, showed a small improvement afterwards, driven by the business sector. Productivity growth and levels vary across sectors, with the industrial sector generally outperforming market services in all countries. Italy's low aggregate growth, however, cannot be traced back to a composition tilted towards low productivity sectors, rather to across-the-board insufficient sectors' productivity growth. Few exceptions emerge in the industrial sector in 2014-2019: some manufacturing sectors that are more exposed to international trade exhibited higher productivity growth in Italy than elsewhere. Investment affects labor productivity growth through capital deepening. Investment trends, influenced by the financial crisis, varied across countries and sectors. Investment in intangibles (especially important for innovation) consistently increased, while investment in other assets fluctuated, with Italy and Spain experiencing delayed recovery. Intangibles constituted a larger share of investment in the industrial sector, and were most relevant in France.

Suggested Citation

  • Rosalia Greco, 2023. "A structural analysis of productivity in Italy: a cross-industry, cross-country perspective," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 825, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    • Handle: RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_825_23
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/qef/2023-0825/QEF_825_23.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrea Linarello & Andrea Petrella, 2017. "Productivity and Reallocation: Evidence from the Universe of Italian Firms," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 32, pages 116-136, Spring.
    2. Chad Syverson, 2017. "Challenges to Mismeasurement Explanations for the US Productivity Slowdown," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 165-186, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Evguenia Bessonova & Anna Tsvetkova, 2022. "Do Productivity Laggards Ever Catch Up With Leaders?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 68(S1), pages 71-107, April.
    2. Wim Naudé, 2016. "Is European Entrepreneurship in Crisis?," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 14(03), pages 03-07, October.
    3. Christos A Makridis & Andrew A Borkowski & Gil Alterovitz, 2024. "Perspectives on advancing innovation and human flourishing through a network of AI institutes," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 51(3), pages 557-562.
    4. Diane Coyle & Jen‐Chung Mei, 2023. "Diagnosing the UK productivity slowdown: which sectors matter and why?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 90(359), pages 813-850, July.
    5. Dan Andrews & Balázs Égert & Christine de la Maisonneuve, 2024. "From decline to revival: Policies to unlock human capital and productivity," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1827, OECD Publishing.
    6. Venturini, Francesco, 2022. "Intelligent technologies and productivity spillovers: Evidence from the Fourth Industrial Revolution," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 194(C), pages 220-243.
    7. Fabiano Schivardi & Enrico Sette & Guido Tabellini, 2022. "Credit Misallocation During the European Financial Crisis," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(641), pages 391-423.
    8. Jennifer Bruner & Dylan G. Rassier & Kim J. Ruhl, 2018. "Multinational Profit Shifting and Measures throughout Economic Accounts," NBER Chapters, in: Challenges of Globalization in the Measurement of National Accounts, pages 153-205, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Austan Goolsbee & Chad Syverson, 2022. "The Strange and Awful Path of Productivity in the US Construction Sector," NBER Chapters, in: Technology, Productivity, and Economic Growth, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. repec:osf:osfxxx:akqhn_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Giovanni DOSI & Maria Enrica VIRGILLITO, 2019. "Whither the evolution of the contemporary social fabric? New technologies and old socio‐economic trends," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 158(4), pages 593-625, December.
    12. Robert J. Gordon & Hassan Sayed, 2019. "The Industry Anatomy of the Transatlantic Productivity Growth Slowdown," NBER Working Papers 25703, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Steffen Elstner & Lars P. Feld & Christoph M. Schmidt, 2018. "The German Productivity Paradox - Facts and Explanations," CESifo Working Paper Series 7231, CESifo.
    14. Nicholas Oulton, 2018. "GDP and the System of National Accounts: Past, Present and Future," Discussion Papers 1802, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM), revised Jun 2018.
    15. David R Baqaee & Ariel Burstein, 2023. "Welfare and Output With Income Effects and Taste Shocks," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 138(2), pages 769-834.
    16. David Autor & Christina Patterson & John Van Reenen, 2023. "Local and national concentration trends in jobs and sales: The role of structural transformation," POID Working Papers 069_updated, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    17. David Byrne & Stephen D. Oliner & Daniel E. Sichel, 2017. "Prices of high-tech products, mismeasurement, and the pace of innovation," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 52(2), pages 103-113, April.
    18. Razzak, Weshah, 2017. "International Productivity Growth Differentials Sectoral Analysis and Missing Productivity," MPRA Paper 84967, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 06 Mar 2018.
    19. Brynjolfsson, Erik & Collis, Avinash & Diewert, W. Erwin & Eggers, Felix & Fox, Kevin J., 2019. "GDP-B: Accounting for the Value of New and Free Goods in the Digital Economy," OSF Preprints sptfu, Center for Open Science.
    20. Sara Calligaris & Massimo Del Gatto & Fadi Hassan & Gianmarco I P Ottaviano & Fabiano Schivardi & Tommaso MonacelliManaging Editor, 2018. "The productivity puzzle and misallocation: an Italian perspective," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 33(96), pages 635-684.
    21. Chris Forman & Avi Goldfarb, 2021. "Concentration and Agglomeration of IT Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Patenting," NBER Chapters, in: The Role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth, pages 95-121, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    labor productivity; growth; investment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
    • O52 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Europe

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_825_23. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bdigvit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.