Italians Failed to Become More Efficient in Last Decade

(Bloomberg) -- Italians failed to become more efficient over the last decade -- on average total factor productivity growth subtracted 0.3 percentage point from potential GDP growth. After a big drop induced by the coronavirus crisis, Bloomberg Economics sees that figure moving toward zero and staying there for the foreseeable future, a reading significantly below the growth rates forecast for Germany and France. Those different speeds would cause national income gaps to become substantially wider and the divergence would cast more doubt on the sustainability of the monetary union.

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