The economic policy in Italy has experienced, during the eighties, some interventions
that could be considered as part of the supply-side policy. They were, however, of
sectoral type and subsidy-oriented: transfers of funds to the firms, mostly state-owned,
but also private, which were aimed at specific goals and did not stem from a common strategy.
Such interventions often tend to preserve and sometimes to foster sectoral discrepancies in
the process of economic growth. It is therefore necessary to implement a supply-side policy
which is factor-oriented, capable of affecting the variuos industries of the country in an
horizontal way. In the present conditions of public finance in Italy, it is important to
find effective interventions that can bring about new institutions and rules rather than
new public expenditures. In this way, it could be possible to achieve positive results in
the process of capital accumulation and the widening of production capacity.