Abstract A new economic history of Italy since the country's political unification in 1861. New data and interpretations by leading international economic historians and brilliant young Italian economists to reconsider the relatively little-known story of a latecomer to "modern economic growth", who rapidly caught up with the advanced Western countries. Fresh research includes: a new set of national accounts covering the entire period 1861-2011, standard of living indicators (including income distribution from the late nineteenth century onward), productivity levels and growth rates, human and social capital, migrations, real exchange rates and changes in comparative advantages, firm size, patents, the evolution of public debt, measures and explanations of the regional divide, the allocation of credit, and data on the changing efficiency of the administrative system. The book takes a strong comparative stance to illuminate the traits of Italy's growth pattern that are common to the Western experience of "modern economic growth" and those that are idiosyncratic to the Peninsula, as well as to see how and when this medium-sized open economy successfully rode the expansionary waves of the world economy. In this vein, the book explains the rapid catch-up growth during both the pre-1914 first globalization and the second post-war "golden age" of Western capitalism, as well as the less satisfactory performances in the first decades after unification and during the recent "second globalization".
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