Since 1861, Italy’s public debt has been both high and sustainable. The paper reviews the history of the Italian debt, highlighting the determinants of both accumulation and consolidation at various times in Italian history. Focusing on the last twenty-some years, the paper suggests that there may be substantive reasons to believe that the Great Recession of 2008-2011 produced a regime change that makes the policies that have ensured debt sustainability up to the present no longer suitable.

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