• The severe crisis we are currently experiencing has forced millions of people to work, study, inform themselves, and maintain social relationships online. Without digital connections, lockdowns would not have been possible or would have led to chaos and the collapse of the economy
• We need to leverage this reality in order to catch up with Italy's large gap with the rest of Europe in terms of digitisation of the economy and societies. The time to act is now. If we return to the status quo before the pandemic, we will have culpably missed an unrepeatable opportunity.
• After the necessary loss-relief measures for businesses and households, we need to think about revitalisation. The creation of a digitisation-friendly ecosystem, as defined in the documents of the European Commission, is the main instrument to foster economic growth. It is also the necessary complement to the other pillar for Europe's future, the Green New Deal.

• Digital technologies are having an enormous influence in all areas of our social, cultural and economic life. They are the pivot and the lever around which all the major strands of change and revolution running through our society are revolving. Moreover, the Covid-19 emergency has only exacerbated and brought to hitherto unthinkable consequences certain trends that we had been witnessing for some time. It is therefore important to understand, on the one hand, what the characteristics of these technologies are and, on the other, what impact they have and will have on our lives and the development of our society.
• These notes address three themes: firstly, the main characteristics of digital technologies; secondly, certain dynamics in our society that have emerged also and above all as a consequence of the Covid-19 emergency; and finally, the main repercussions on our society and, consequently, hypotheses for intervention strategies that public decision-makers and private actors must put in place.

Jel classification: O33, O31, D73, D81.
Keywords: innovation, digital technology, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, data value chain, digital ecosystems, network infrastructure, smart working, automation, real-time, Covid-19.

• Productivity stagnation is a pathology that since the late 1990s has kept Italy in the vicious circle of low growth, low wages and falling living standards, high public debt relative to GDP and reduced ability to cushion crises that in turn reduce productivity.
• The Covid-19 pandemic makes the role of productivity even more central in view of the recovery, which we will be able to grasp the sooner we enter a virtuous path of productivity recovery.
• Total productivity is what increases the potential of the economy and living standards. Its foundation is in technological development. Since the 1990s, the digitisation of the economy has quadrupled the number of patents worldwide, and in recent years the strategic focus of companies at the frontier has shifted to accumulated data and the intellectual property developed on this data by artificial intelligence and machine learning: however, productivity has remained stagnant in all advanced countries.
• Solving this conundrum is the objective of this article, which will proceed to identify structural and cyclical obstacles to the diffusion of innovation. Obstacles that will otherwise make recovery more difficult and fragile.

JEL classification: E01, E20, E22, E23, E24.
Keywords: growth, Total Factor Productivity.

• The dense intertwining of digitisation and automation that characterises the current phase of technological transformation is freeing humans from mostly routine, tiring, uninteresting tasks and paving the way for new, cognitively intensive and thus more rewarding occupations; it has the potential to create better working conditions, not least because it broadens the possibilities of working wherever one wants; to make economic systems more resilient to unexpected shocks; to provide the necessary response, in terms of productivity gains and changes in working patterns, to an ageing population and environmental sustainability. These considerations are all the more true when applied to the Italian case.
• In Italy, policies are needed to create an ecosystem favourable to digital transformation in order to make the most of the potential of new technologies. Both fiscal and labour market policies and training policies. The latter, in particular, must provide young people entering the labour market and adult workers with constantly updated skills, both to meet the challenges of the labour market stimulated by continuous technological changes and to fully seize the opportunities - a side on which we appear to be decidedly in deficit with respect to other countries, given the evidence of a polarisation of job opportunities that has so far been unbalanced towards low-skilled occupations.
• It is crucial to modernise the education system's training offer, so that it is also capable of transferring transversal skills; to invest more in education pathways that enhance the training capacity of companies; to make training a permanent dimension of people's lives.

JEL Classification: I25, J24, O32, O33, O38.
Keywords: digital technologies, employment effects, vocational tertiary education, continuing education.

• Digital transformation has been a priority objective of the European Commission for many years now.
• The development of ultra-broadband in Europe is progressing rapidly. However, substantial public funding is needed to ensure coverage of territorial areas with market failure.
• There are significant differences between EU member states in the digitisation process: while some countries are world leaders, others, including Italy, are lagging far behind.
• In the digital ecosystem, Europe has reduced its share in world production over the last decade and appears particularly weak in the internet services sector.

JEL Classification: H54, K23, O33, O38.
Keywords: infrastructure, public investment, communication industry, digital divide, technology adoption, technology measurement, technology policy.

• Italy suffers from a considerable lag in the diffusion of digital technologies. Contributing factors are supply-side factors, such as the development of state-of-the-art networks, and demand-side factors.
• On the supply side, the Italian lag is attributable to the lower coverage of the fixed network, in particular of the ultra-fast network, only partly compensated by the mobile network.
• On the demand side, the fragmented structure of the production sector, the low digital skills of the population and public administrations weigh heavily.
• The Covid-19 emergency put pressure on the network, highlighting large untapped margins for the use of digital technologies.

JEL Classification: K21, K23, L4, L96.
Keywords: telecommunication networks, network regulation, broadband, 5G, digital skills, smart working, e-commerce, e-government, Covid-19.

• International trade has also been influenced by the digital transformation and the share of trade across national borders carried by digital means is growing in some important markets, including emerging markets such as China.
• The use of the digital channel for exporting among Italian companies is still quite limited, but not marginal, particularly in some of Italy's leading export sectors.
• Access to the digital channel for exporting is not an automatic extension of traditional exports, and requires organisational, logistical and skills adaptations on the part of companies. Italian companies find some limitations in this due to their relatively small average size and the scarce presence of externally recruited human capital with specific skills.
• Existing evidence, in particular with the forced growth of online sales during the crisis due to Covid-19, indicates that the use of e-commerce could help expand markets for companies that adopt it consciously and with the appropriate investment.

JEL Classification: F12, F14, O14.
Keywords: e-commerce, productivity, logistics, online channels.

• The taxation of digital assets has challenged tax systems around the world. The basic question is where value is formed and who is entitled to tax it. The difficult answers have undermined all mechanisms linking taxation and territory and generated epidermal reactions that are as understandable as they are irrational. An agreement must be pursued: but the balance of power is seriously tested.

Jel classification: F60, H25, H26, H87, K34, L81, L86.
Keywords: web company, web economy, web tax, digital services tax, permanent establishment, group taxation, internet.

• The process of digital transformation is not a recent phenomenon, although it has been accelerating for some time, affecting all economic sectors and society as a whole. The Covid-19 pandemic has made clear the crucial role of digital technologies for the growth and competitiveness of the production system and for the quality of public services (schools, health, transport).
• From the convergence of information and communication markets, we have moved, in the space of a few years, to the emergence of a digital ecosystem, in which a fundamental role is played by the large Internet platforms, now the absolute protagonists of the digital transformation of markets.
• Institutions have failed to prevent large digital platforms from acquiring market power that is increasingly difficult to counterbalance. Adjustments of regulation and competition protection to the new realities of digital markets have been very late in coming. But, in recent times, the approach of regulators has changed, as witnessed by the path initiated by the European Commission.
• The shock of the coronavirus imposes two pushes on this path: one in the direction of acceleration, the other in the direction of integration with other measures. A new growth path, consistent with the values and principles of the European Union, must now take up the challenges proposed by the pandemic, regulate and govern the evolution of the digital ecosystem, and coordinate it with policies for environmental sustainability.

JEL Classification: K21, K23, L16, L43, L50, 033.
Keywords: digital technologies, internet platforms, antitrust, market regulation.

• The paper discusses some manifestations of the digitisation of finance and money, focusing on the competition between banks and fintech companies; the origins of crypto-assets and the emergence of Bitcoin; the proposed introduction of stablecoins; and the arguments for and against the introduction of a digital currency offered by central banks. Common to the topics discussed is the interplay between technological innovations and institutional responses.

JEL classification: E42, E51, E58, G21, G23.
Keywords: currency, finance, fintech, crypto-assets, Bitcoin, stablecoin, central bank digital currency.