-2-  Riccardo too related the increased attention paid to the worsening of Italy’s economic performance to the changes in the international economic situation: globalization and the rise of emerging market economies, which threatened Italy’s comparative advantages in sectors of specialization with low intensity of both human capital and technology.
To counter the decline story, his main argument was that Italy’s worse aggregate growth in the 1990s in comparison with its peers (France, Germany and the US) was biased by demographic factors: in per capita terms Italy’s growth was only marginally slower (he drew similar conclusions in terms of purchasing power parity).