"Carlo Bastasin and Gianni Toniolo provide a much-needed, up-to-date economic history of Italy from unification in 1861 to the present. They reveal the factors behind Italy's twentieth-century growth as well as how economic decline in the last thirty years has resulted in rising levels of populism, mistrust and government instability"--

Carlo Bastasin is a Senior Fellow and Professor of European Economic Governance at the LUISS University in Rome and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Preface; 1. Italy's parabola, 1861-2022; 2. Political unification and slow growth; 3. Convergence and sorpasso; 4. The trauma of 1992; 5. The lost opportunity, 1996-2007; 6. Sliding toward zero growth; 7. The canary in the coalmine.