TY - BOOK ID - 134343792 TI - Identifying Service Market Reform Priorities in Italy AU - Belhocine, Nazim. AU - Garcia-Macia, Daniel. PY - 2020 PB - Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, DB - UniCat KW - Finance: General KW - Labor KW - Industries: Service KW - Production and Operations Management KW - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure KW - Size Distribution of Firms KW - Industry Studies: Services: General KW - Macroeconomics: Production KW - Human Capital KW - Skills KW - Occupational Choice KW - Labor Productivity KW - General Financial Markets: General (includes Measurement and Data) KW - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs: General KW - Macroeconomics KW - Finance KW - Labour KW - income economics KW - Productivity KW - Labor productivity KW - Services sector KW - Competition KW - Wages KW - Production KW - Economic sectors KW - Financial markets KW - Industrial productivity KW - Service industries KW - Italy UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:134343792 AB - Italy’s labor productivity in market services has declined since 2000, underperforming manufacturing and peer European countries, especially in strongly regulated sectors. A model of monopolistic competition is used to identify which service sectors would benefit more from removing entry and/or exit barriers. Using Italian firm-level data, the paper finds that sectors with high markups, such as professional services, would primarily benefit from removing entry barriers. Sectors with a large mass of unproductive firms, such as retail, would instead benefit from removing exit barriers. Policy recommendations to improve efficiency are outlined in relation to the sectoral priorities identified in the data. ER -