Ministero dell'Economia e delle Finanze

Roma, 24 - 25 Novembre 2009

Ministero dell'Economia e delle Finanze - Dipartimento del Tesoro
Biblioteca Luca Pacioli - Sala Conferenze - Polo Multifunzionale
Via Pastrengo, 1

Day One: Measuring Competitiveness

The objective of this first session is to tackle some of the issues below:

Price and cost factors affecting external competitiveness: exchange rates, wages and productivity

• Equilibrium real exchange rate (using different denominators: price deflators and ULC);
• Wage, productivity and ULC developments;
• Does Italy have a problem? Basic data (current account, export market share, sectoral, geographical destination, technological content, quality upgrading);
• What are the usual suspects explaining external sector performance? (globalisation, productivity, wages, ULC and structural factors).

Some structural factors affecting external competitiveness

1. The impact of domestic markets for inputs on exporting firms (impact of domestically produced input costs on export firm competitiveness and on their ability to adapt to changes in market structure, foreign competition and the economic cycle)
   • Labour market flexibility (wage flexibility and hiring and firing);
   • Goods and services market flexibility (price of domestically produced inputs).
2. Structure of production and financing in the export sector
   • firm size, supply chain, production process, marketing, clusters;
   • financing (banks, venture capital, equity markets, trade financing).
3. Role of macroeconomic stability and implications of the crisis for the external sector
   • Government debt and deficit, interest rates, inflation;
   • Impact of the crisis on euro exchange rate, global imbalances.
4. Role of policy in improving external competitiveness
   • Productivity, wage moderation;
   • Lisbon agenda.
5. The above topics with a specific focus on Italy.

Day Two: Business Services, Competitiveness and Internationalization.

The objective of the second day is to address some important issues connected to the importance
of services for competitiveness, with a specific focus on Italy:

• Efficient producer services are increasingly relevant to the pursuit of an outward-oriented growth strategy;
• Access to efficient services matters not only because it creates the potential for new exports
  but also because it is an increasingly important determinant of economic productivity and competitiveness;
• To compete at the international level, exporters increasingly rely on reduced product-cycle times, prompt delivery,
  and improved customer services. As a result, the service content of final exports is increasing;
• Markets for these services are sensitive to technological change;
• Innovative service providers are enhancing transportation and communication systems, and developing
  an advanced services infrastructure. Availability of infrastructure is a criterion in location decisions of exporters;
• Because of the non-storability of many services, FDI is the major mode of international delivery of services.
  Lowering barriers to FDI is crucial;
• Importance of “long-distance” services: data entry was one of the first service activities to be
  internationally outsourced. Software programming is increasingly traded across
  borders and so are "Back-office" service activities.