TheSpectacledCloth
Gone Fishin'
Due to the political chaos of Italy after World War I (because of how they got so little from the peace treaties), its economy was thrown into turmoil. Mussolini's policies focused more on being self-sufficient. So Italy did not suffer nearly as much during the Great Depression, and the resulting progress made Italians have more faith in Mussolini.
Didn't Ethiopia prove an economic money pit? They originally went in expecting it to pay for itself. What followed was anything but.
TheSpectacledCloth
Gone Fishin'
Yeah, after the mid-thirties, Italy's economy started to falter a little. And it was during World War II when the economy was ruined.
Well, after little to no research at all, I found out that Mussolini doctrine of self reliance caused a lot of inflation because many of the consumer goods (including food) that the italian people needed had to be imported from the outside, and due the restrictions imposed by himself (and the embargos due the invasion of Abyssinia) those goods became rarer and the overral living standart fell
There were some well publicized public works projects. Converting marshlands to farms, automotive roads, railway expansion, port development. That sort of thing has a way of pumping money into the economy in the form of construction wages. A short term, 5-10 years, burst. If the ports or railways have no traffic or the farms have no marketable crops the capitol loss is not apparent for at least a half decade. What did or did not gain wealth among the Facist public works projects I can't say.
AFAIK the Italian involvement in the Spanish Civil War was as big a drain on money and foreign currency as the Ethiopian War was.
From the early 1930s the Italians made a concerted effort to reduce their dependence on foreign (probably British) shipping by buying ships on the second hand market and building new ships in their own yards. I'm not qualified to comment on whether the extra invisible earnings were worth the cost.
They also increased their coal production.
The Italian equivalent of the British Office for National Statistics has a website with a lot of information on the Italian economy on it.