The Competitiveness of Italian Firms: The Source of the Trouble.

Abstract

Italy's competitiveness problem ultimately concerns the productivity of its firms and the quality of its products. To stimulate productivity growth and upgrade the quality of products, there must be room for "creative destruction" through competition within a fair and transparent normative context. The aim is to stimulate competition among firms, the contestability of their market shares, integration between regional markets through the improvement of logistic infrastructures, competition in business services and the simplification of legislation and bureaucratic procedures. A return to protectionist manoeuvres that resurrect the perverse logic of past devaluations would instead contain the seed of Italy's economic retrogression.