The paper presents an overview of available statistics on the internationalization of the Italian economy. The different sources are compared in terms of completeness, consistency and compatibility, timeliness, relevance and frequency of revisions, presence of systematic biases and significant discontinuities. The data representing the internationalization of the Italian productive system are not always consistent with each other. To address some deep questions, widely debated in the scientific literature, there is still a need to improve and enrich the production of statistics. The best answer to this type of information requirements is to be found in microdata, in which, as far as economically burdensome their production, investments are needed in order to understand a phenomenon of increasing complexity that has now gone beyond the information capacity of macroeconomic statistics. Such data would also be very useful for an effective economic policy, in which you feel a strong need, to enhance the attractiveness of the region for foreign investment, to improve the productivity of enterprises, to support the inter-nationalization.
Published in 2016 in: Rivista di politica economica, v. 106, 4-6
