Nicholas Bloom: evaluation

Transcript context

…Italy has had almost no per capita income growth for about 20 years now. Is that because of the deficiencies of Italian firms? Italy hasn’t changed enough? Italy is just a productivity basket case. When I talk to Raffaella Sadun, for example, my long-term coauthor — when I talk to her about Italian productivity, a lot of the issues you hear about are regulations, political instability, challenges in the education system, migration. Another thing for Italy — it’s even more so for Greece, actually — is that a lot of Southern Europe has suffered from a large negative brain drain. I know lots of highly able Italians, but many of them I know are in the US and the UK, and they’ve left the country because of its poor economic prospects. Italy is almost a laundry list of what’s gone wrong and what not to do, but I think a lot of it comes down to poor government that then feeds through into all these policies that make it hard for firms to innovate. Italy’s R&D performance isn’t great. It’s very uncertain. It drives a lot of people abroad. The education system is poor. What exactly is the value of management consultants? Because to many outsiders, it appears absurd that these not-so-well-trained young people come in. They tell companies what to do. Sometimes it’s even called fraudulent if they command high returns. How does this work? What’s the value added?…

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