“Analysing what has happened in the last few years, how it has changed society and the productive structure, can help us to get the measure of the challenges that await us.”
La Repubblica

“A history of the Italian economy in the last 15 years.”
La Repubblica, Il Venerdì

“What are the causes that originate this prolonged avalanche of difficulties that western societies have been called on to address? […] The breaking of the Keynesian pact in the course of the 1970s generated the period of neo-liberalism promoted by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.”
Il mattino

In the last 15 years, Italy, like all the rest of the world, has had to address a flurry of economic crises. From the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 – which began in the United States and spread everywhere, inflicting on the capitalist West one of the most painful wounds it has ever suffered – to the one caused by the sadly unprecedented and unexpected scenarios that followed the Covid-19 pandemic, crises appear to have become a cyclical destiny for the economy. Yet, albeit apparently similar, the difficult economic trends experienced by the Italian economic system over the last few years have specific features and distinctive characteristics that are not always easy to understand for the uninitiated. Subprime, spread, sovereign debt, risk, quantitative easing – all words we have read hundreds of times but whose meanings we sometimes struggle to fit into a coherent, organic narrative capable of pointing out connections, causal relations and short- and long-term effects. How has our productive fabric reacted to the various crises? Which business strategies have proved successful and which ineffective? What relationship is there between the Greek crisis of 2009 and the Italian sovereign debt crisis of 2011? In the last two years the pandemic has posed us more major health, social and political challenges – and economic too, of course, on account of business closures and standstills or slowdowns in production. Not to mention the fact that these challenges come on top of others already underway, such as poverty and inequality, the climate emergency and the digital revolution. In this Chinese puzzle of events, Giorgio Brunetti helps us shed light on things and put them in order. In order to have awareness of the past and the present and, above all, to acquire the tools necessary to imagine the future.

Giorgio Brunetti is emeritus professor of Business Strategy and Policy at the Bocconi University in Milan, where he was full professor in the same subject from 1992 to 2007. With Bollati Boringhieri he has published Artigiani, visionari e manager. Dai mercanti veneziani alla crisi finanziaria (Artisans, Visionaries and Managers. From Venetian merchants to the financial crisis, 2012) and Fare impresa nel Nord Est. Dal decollo alla grande crisi (Doing Business in the North East. From take-off to major crisis, 2015).