From the editor...

“There is always someone worse off than you,” as Aesop reminded us. That also means there is always someone to feel superior to. In post-war Europe, Italy was the country everyone made fun of, dismissing it as eternally chaotic, fiscally incontinent, and notoriously minimalist (in the German-speaking world, a goalless draw in football was always described as a “typically Italian result”, as the Serie A league was full of them). No wonder. As Deutsche Bank reminds us, the last time Italy produced...