Mario Monti’s appointment as prime minister of Italy has given some hope to observers of the current crisis in the eurozone. Monti, a former student of Nobel Prize winning economist James Tobin at Yale and president of the Bocconi University in Milan, has strong academic and policy credentials. Assuming he can command sufficient political support for his cabinet, will Monti be able to save Italy’s ailing economy and bring the country’s public finances back in order?

The Italian prime minister might be a competent a technocrat, but the prospects for a major overhaul of Italy’s economy remain bleak. There are no quick fixes for the country’s problems, the major problems of Italy’s economy are deep and require complex and politically difficult reforms.