Research Paper on:
Italy’s Business Environment

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
countries that would be attractive to business must have favorable tax structures and decreasing levels of regulation. Italy provides counterpoint to that argument. One of the worlds leading  bureaucracies, Italy is prospering despite suffering the effects of "revolving door" government and business-oppressive social policies. Legal and Political Environment Italy has been  known for decades for its propensity for revolving-door government, with many of its various governments lasting on average about a year throughout much of the 1980s and 1990s. There  are dozens of recognized political parties in Italy, many of which hold to extreme leftist policies. Form of Government Formally, the government of  Italy is that of a republic. It has a bicameral legislative branch; its executive branch has two heads. The president is the chief of state, but it is  the prime minister who is the head of the government. Currently, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi has been president since May, 1999; Silvio Berlusconi has been prime minister since June, 2001  (Italy, 2003). Risk and Stability For business, there is little political risk present in Italy, and the current government is about as stable  as has been found in Italy for some time. Italys left-leaning policies historically have been unfriendly to business in the sense that they have so extensively been shaped by  socialist politics with heavy involvement of powerful labor unions. There is a great deal of government involvement in business, a situation that various governments have sought to alter in  recent years. The government has been actively privatizing businesses that properly belong in the private sector (Paonita, 2002), but it still is involved in burdensome regulation of business. Laws