[ExI] Italy's Social Capital

[Lee Corbin]

Amara wrote

Sent: Friday, June 08, 2007 12:22 AM

> > We may be trying to talk about two different things: I'm
> > was talking mostly about the entire scientific/technical/
> > economic package (of which Silicon Valley is the world
> > pre-eminent example), and you may be talking about
> > pure science.
> 
> I was, but they are strongly linked, and I implied the larger picture
> (perhaps not very well) in my writing.
> 
> There is very little private industry for research in Italy. Fairly
> telling for the 5th largest economy in the world, no? Only two in the
> worlds top 100 businesses investing in R&D are Italian companies.

That's surprising---I didn't realize that Italy comprised one of the
world's largest economies.  

This lists it as 7th  (notice the huge drop off right after Italy):

http://www.australianpolitics.com/foreign/trade/03-01-07_largest-economies.shtml

And this lists it as sixth, along with the world's largest *corporations*
mentioned in the same list:

http://www.corporations.org/system/top100.html

This historical ranking is interesting too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_GDP_%28PPP%29

Lee