Italy

Kimberly Italy's fundamentals are extremely bad. Italy's low productivity is a good place to start with all of their issues. For developed Western economies competing with the rising powers in Asia, the most important route to growth during the past couple decades has been productivity. Italy's productivity gains,have been severely bad. Reaching back to the 1990s, Italian employees have been clocking longer hours but they produce less. In June, the IMF (International Monetary Fund) found that compared to other eurozone countries, Italy suffers from excessive regulation and a lack of R&D spending. Because the economy is dominated by small and medium sized businesses its capital markets are poorly developed. And the small operations also aren't able to achieve the crucial economies of scale that create efficiencies. Italy has an economy dominated by red tape and small companies, which lack the funding to make technology investments that would improve their competitiveness. And all of that's before they get to the labor market, which, according to the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), lacks on almost every measure of efficiency. Italy's 8% unemployment rate is actually reasonable by today's standards. Much like Greece (and increasingly, the U.S.), Italy basically has a split job market. Senior workers are protected by inflexible employment laws that make them hard to fire. Meanwhile, young Italians, who have an unemployment rate above 27%, are relegated to short-term contracts that leave them hopping job to job. Which also puts their productive labor force in danger.

I got all this information from www.theatlantic.com

