Over the period 1995-2016, the Italian performance in terms of productivity was poor in historical terms and in comparison with its main international partners. This issue goes beyond Italy, with declining productivity growth being observed in other advanced economies. Possible explanations for the slowdown include factors such as lower capital investment by firms, decreased competition, excessive regulation, capital misallocation. The slowing rates of measured productivity growth has also raised questions on the adequacy of current compilation methods (i.e. the mis-measurement hypothesis). The "ICT revolution" has created new ways of exchanging and providing goods and services as a result of increased connectivity. These developments challenge the way economic activity is "traditionally" measured. There are also a number of measurement problems associated with estimating output and input volumes especially related to the quality of prices indexes for some products and services. These problems have an impact on productivity estimates and might impair international comparability. In this paper we intend to investigate, after having surveyed the main empirical and theoretical advancements in productivity measurement, what the core problems in productivity measurement and interpretation are, with a specific focus for Italy.