Italy, a founding member of the EU and one of the world's ten largest economies, is often associated with excessive public debt, economic recessions, and socio-economic crises. This volume provides an unbiased analysis of the political economy of Italy, examining the relative importance of domestic and international factors in the country's development. This collection comprises eight contributions from scholars who have extensively studied Italy, offering diverse disciplinary perspectives. In this work, the authors challenge prevailing explanations and offer new insights into Italy's unique position between the core and periphery of the EU. They also examine the determinants and consequences of public and private debt in Italy, its distinctive welfare system, the role of inflation, the persistent inequality between the north and south, and the Italian education system. Above all, the contributions to this volume aim to examine the phenomena of socio-economic inequalities within and between Italy and other EU member states in different subject areas. Both country-specific and structural factors are considered to shed light on the underlying causes and understand how the multiple crises in Europe are both a consequence and a further driver of these inequalities. Contents: Ulrich Glassmann and Claudius Gräbner-Radkowitsch: Centre-Periphery Relations in Europe and the Political Economy of Italy. An introduction Philipp Heimberger: Italy’s decline: A critical reassessment of prevailing explanations Claudius Gräbner-Radkowitsch and Jakob Kapeller: Development models in the EU: opportunities and challenges Giuseppe Celi, Dario Guarascio and Francesco Zezza: From Miracle to Decline. Italy’s long-term development trajectory between core and periphery Lucio Gobbi and Stefano Lucarelli Public Debt and Inflation in Italy’s Political Economy. Then and Now Martino Comelli Old and hopeless: gerontocratic welfare, household indebtedness, and economic pessimism in Italy Valeria Cirillo and Jelena Reljic The North-South Divide. A Structural Labor Market Perspective in Italy’s fragmented Landscape Marius R. Busemeyer and Ulrich Glassmann The regional variety of skill regimes in Italy: What is the citizens’ view?