简体中文
Italy's productivity gap with other European partners stems from a large predominance of micro-sized firms and not from an inappropriate specialisation of its economy, a recent study said.
Net of those smallest companies, Italian efficiency level would be "not so far from that of Germany", a report by Nomisma economic research institute in Bologna stated.
The report, called "Efficiency and Specialisation", was based on data provided by Eurostat, the European Union (EU) statistical office.
"The deep roots of Italy's output gap with a benchmark country like Germany lie in the strong disproportion in the size of firms that tells the two economies apart," Nomisma chief economist and author of the study Sergio De Nardis told Xinhua.
Low labor productivity is considered a major factor in the continued crisis of the eurozone's third largest economy. It is also a long-lasting problem. After being among the best in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, Italy lagged behind its main European partners since mid-1990s, and its productivity sharply declined.
The productivity gap between Italy and Germany, Europe's largest economy, is now estimated at 20 percentage points.
Yet, this gap would be almost entirely filled if the distribution of workers by firm size classes in Italy were similar to that of Germany, the study stated.
"Productivity performance of Italian firms has been compared to that of German firms for each size class," De Nardis explained.
"The competitive disadvantage with Germany proved to be very significant in micro-enterprises and also present, to a lesser extent, in large companies with more than 250 employees," said the expert.
Yet, a very different picture came out from businesses "in the middle".
Italy showed in fact a clear productivity advantage when compared to German small-sized firms with 20 to 49 employees, and especially to medium sized ones with 50 to 249 workers. In the latter case, the performance would be considerably in favor of Italy.
"Italian medium companies are in fact 25 to 30 percent more productive than those of the same size in Germany, with an advantage potentially increasing over time," De Nardis wrote in the report.
Unfortunately, Italy's firm size distribution is not helpful. The country has in fact the highest relative proportion of firms from the less competitive size class, the micro-enterprises.
They constitute 94.8 percent of the manufacturing, employ 45. 8 percent of labor force, and contribute 30.4 percent to the total value added, EU latest data showed.
Medium companies, on the contrary, are quite negligible. They are 0.5 percent of all businesses, employ 12.7 percent of workforce and contribute 17.8 percent to the total value added.
In Germany, micro firms seem less crucial: they are 81.8 percent of all businesses, give work to 18.7 percent of the labor force, and contribute 15.1 percent to the total value added. Medium-sized firms are 2.5 percent, with a significant 20.4 percent of the total labor force.
Nomisma report also compared the two countries under three cases, with the following results: if Italy had the same sectoral specialisation of Germany, the 20-point productivity gap between them would drop by 5 points. If Italy increased its productivity for each single firm size class to match those in Germany, the gap would decrease by 10 points.
But if Italy's distribution of workers by size classes were equal to that of Germany, the productivity gap would be then almost filled.
Finally, Nomisma economist disagreed with the widespread notion that a major cause of Italy's decline would lie in the enduring prevalence of traditional sectors, such as textile, clothing or leather, over more innovative businesses.
"I don't agree, I think our specialisation is the outcome of global competition," De Nardis said.
Italy had indeed big companies counting upon public resources to survive in the past, he recalled, but the situation has changed since the 1990s and what remained was an "efficient" result of globalisation.
"Consumers around the world choose today what Italian firms have to produce, and they keep asking high-quality articles, like hand-made leather shoes for example, more than IT products which are provided more efficiently and at lower costs by Asian competitors," he explained.
The expert conducted a comparative advantage and competitiveness analysis, to support this conclusion. It showed Italy indeed has towards both the EU and Germany "a comparative advantage", which means the capability to sell goods at lower prices and higher profit margins than others. In other words, to be more competitive.
