Latest / The Productivity Podcast with Fexingo: Output, Efficiency, and Long-Term Economic Growth
Why Italy Trails Germany in Factory Productivity
Italy and Germany both have world-class manufacturing reputations, but Italy's factory productivity has trailed Germany's by roughly 20 percent for two decades. This episode unpacks the specific structural reasons behind the gap: Italy's dominance of tiny family-run firms that underinvest in automation, the fragmentation of industrial districts, and the lack of a national training system like Germany's dual apprenticeship model. We examine the case of the Emilia-Romagna packaging machinery cluster — world-leading in niche machinery but structurally resistant to the…
The skinny
The skinny isn't ready yet — notes appear once the transcript is processed.