Rather than waiting for productivity to rise, a quicker route to faster growth is to drive down wages. The Hartz reforms succeeded in part because they prompted a decline in real wages in Germany. Real GDP per person has soared in Germany since the introduction of the euro, but workers’ pay has not. Reforms that decentralised collective bargaining in Italy, and that therefore helped to contain wages in less productive regions and firms, would be a step in the right direction, reckons Pietro Reichlin of LUISS, a university in Rome. Indeed, Mr Renzi’s advisers suggest that the government may seek to impose a decentralised wage-setting process if negotiations between trade unions and industry do not yield one.