The ‘Bel Paese’ and the transition to a service economy

This article reconstructs the development of the service sector and analyses its main characteristics in order to measure their contribution to Italy's economic growth. Italy completed the transition to a service economy during the final 20 years of the twentieth century, developing personal and social services first and producer services thereafter, but the history of the service sector in Italy goes back well before then and its initial expansion coincided with the beginning of the process of industrialization. The contribution of services to Italy's economic growth has not been homogeneous. Certain segments, such as tourism, played a vital role in the initial phases of the industrialization of the country by guaranteeing the equilibrium of the trade balance. Others, such as facility management, merely accompanied Italy's economic transformation.