ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a framework for analyzing the some decades of postwar economic growth in Italy. The emphasis is on the role played by aggregate demand and its components in shaping the extremely fast process of economic growth that occurred in Italy during the fifties and sixties. This was accompanied by a profound process of structural change that will briefly be dealt with. The chapter explains that reasons are given that enable one to apply the W. Lewis framework to the Italian economy in the period under consideration. It elucidates the pattern and evolution of aggregate demand in the period under consideration. The chapter interprets the turning point of Italian development in the late 1960s. Finally some entrepreneurs themselves, like Valletta, were entusiastic about future development because they clearly saw a niche for Italian firms and products in the US dominated western economy.
