Until yesterday it seemed the issue of growth only affected poor countries, but the crisis that has been going on since 2007 reveals how the issue concerns "advanced" economies as well. As a matter of fact, growth was a problem already before the crisis: it was a real enigma. For more than half a century, advanced economies have been growing at an increasingly slower pace, and they have been doing so with very different growth rates between one another. What is the secret of growth? What evil force is undermining wealthy countries? And what is the key that allows some of them to keep growing despite it all? Ricolfi's book seeks to answer these questions, ultimately finding an equation - the growth equation - that not only explains why things went as they did, but also leaves us with a message: no country is trapped in its own destiny, the only way a country can fight its tendency to slow down is by improving its own fundamentals. The growth equation points us to what we need to change and what to expect from each of those changes. And in the case of our country, Italy, it also tells us that we can't put them off anymore.