Policy Briefs

V. Meliciani, M. Pini – Digitalization and productivity in Italy: Opportunities and risks of the NRRP

Next Generation EU is an important opportunity for Italy to relaunch its growth and productivity in discontinuity with the past. However, if on the one hand the National Recovery and Resilience Plan offers many opportunities favoring digital transition, with positive effects on the dynamics of economic growth, on the other hand the characteristics of the country’s production system, combined with the recent experiences concerning incentives for investments in digitalization, highlight a series of risks for the goal of full digital transition. The risks regard the asymmetric distribution by territories and firm size, the lack of digital skills, and the presence of inadequate organizational models. Complementarity between investments in digital technologies, training and organizational models and greater synergies between the measures of the Italian NRRP and the strategic lines of the European industrial policy are some of the guidelines that could allow the NRRP to significantly change the pace of Italian structural economic growth.

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Italian version