schooling do not participate in the labour market, compared with 8 per cent for men. nor is this lesser presence of women accompanied by a greater propensity to have children : the fertility rate in italy, together with spain and greece, is significantly below the european average. there is a broad consensus that part - time employment opportunities and adequate childcare structures are effective instruments to encourage women to enter and remain in the labour market. italy is on a par with the most advanced countries in its availability of nursery schools and kindergartens for children between three and six years old, but there is an acute shortage of day nurseries, especially in the south and islands. the estimates available indicate that increasing the number of places in day nurseries could have a positive effect both on women ’ s decision to work and on their decision to have children. in the absence of public and private structures for very young children, home care provided by relatives or babysitters becomes essential. an indirect sign of the importance of this form of assistance is given by the positive correlation between the percentage of immigrants in the population at province level and the propensity of better - educated women aged 25 to 45 with pre - school children to participate in the labour market, particularly in the part - time segment. in general, improving the design of policies in support of dependent family members would have the twofold effect of raising female labour force participation and assisting the choice to have children. see a. brandolini, p. cipollone and e. viviano, “ does the ilo definition capture all unemployment? ”, banca d ’ italia, temi di discussione, no. 529, 2004 ; now in journal of the european economic association, 2006, vol. 4, pp. 153 - 79. the share of self - employment gagliani saw women ’ s low labour force participation as a symptom of italy ’ s development delay. he identified a second aspect of this lag in what he called the “ considerable anomaly ” of the italian case : the large share of self - employed workers in nonfarm employment. according to the labour force survey, in 2005 self - employment accounted for 27 per cent of total employment, against an eu average of 15 per cent ( figure 5 ). among european countries, only greece had a higher percentage. what are the causes of this disparity? self - employment is a composite phenomenon. it includes highincome entrepreneurial activities and professions, but also

propaganda campaign. 6 that worked. in retrospect, one could even say this was unfortunate, as it would have been much easier to reduce the size and the riskiness of the system in the conditions prevailing in 2006 than in 2008. furthermore, one of the solutions was to start collecting deposits abroad, which was to prove devastating for the icelandic nation once the banks failed. the banks also entered new markets, including the us, where issuers with good credit ratings found it easy to sell bonds. as a result, risk appetite returned and moody ’ s took the banks to triple - a for a while in 2007. moreover, the icelandic banks were perhaps better prepared than otherwise for the dramatic reversal of market sentiment that took place in mid2007. interestingly, the high credit default swaps compared to their ratings made the banks ’ bonds good input for structured products. that, however, was to prove a big drawback for the banks once the financial crisis hit for real in 2007 and 2008, as the sell - off of structured products pulled icelandic bank shares with it and sent cds spreads through the ceiling. the fact that the icelandic banking system was based on eu legislation was conducive to cross - border expansion. however, in spite of all its merits, there were fatal flaws in this system. the basic problem was that, although banking and regulation was european, both supervision and the safety net of deposit insurance and lender of last resort were national. the same applied to a significant degree to crisis management. there was an inherent vulnerability and risk associated with this setup, especially for small countries outside the euro area. this proved fatal for iceland, in part because it made the mistake of taking european regulatory directives as mostly binding, but not as a minimum. however, the biggest design failure was in the case of deposit insurance, because not only did it violate the principle of matching international private action with international public measures, but it also violated the insurance principle of pooling. european banks need european deposit insurance. that is how it is. crisis management and resolution let me say a few words about crisis management and resolution in the case of the icelandic banks. during the height of the crisis, its management left a great deal to be desired, especially the cross - border part : • there was lack of information sharing and co - operation across affected jurisdictions. • there was early sale of “ good ” assets at fire sale prices, which will lead to lower recovery ratio for bond holders. a report