And while the recession appears to have swept away the old debate about Italy’s ‘decline’, its intensity, so much  greater in Italy than elsewhere, was probably due at least in part to the same structural problems that for years had been holding the country back. We must now tackle them.
First, the 2001 recession, by dramatically reducing profits, focused firms’ attention on restructuring and cost-cutting rather than on business expansion and likely induced some one-time gains in efficiency.