ROME -- When former European Commissioner Mario Monti took over as the head of a new technocrat government in Italy, the country was on the brink of falling victim to the European debt crisis.

His government has successfully avoided an Italian default that would have sent ripples across the eurozone and beyond, but now it appears that many of the measures he has taken are becoming a major drag on economic growth.

In its more than 14 months in power, the Monti government has assuaged investor fears the government might have been forced to default on debt payments. As a result, bond yields have fallen dramatically: from more than 7 percent on the benchmark 10-year bond trading on secondary markets to a range of around 4.2 percent to 4.5 percent in recent sessions.

Monti's formula is simple to describe, but hard to put into practice -- and, according to many Italians, even harder to live through.

Monti dramatically slashed government spending almost across the board, reducing pensions, social and cultural benefits, the hiring of new workers, ministerial budgets, and even enforcement. He worked hard to improve Italy's image internationally, and to shore up the weakest links in Italy's troubled banking sector.

He focused on Italy's ratings from international ratings agencies, and concentrated on reducing the spread -- the difference in bond yields -- between the yield on Italian debt and that from Germany, Europe's strongest economy.

But most of his steps have focused on tax revenue, as Italy sought to pay down its massive debt.

"Of all the steps the Monti government has taken, it's the tax-related policy changes that have attracted the most attention by far," said Antonio del Cerro, an economist and author.

Though Monti has refrained from raising personal income tax rates, and so far the increase in the country's value-added tax has been delayed, the government has tweaked the way both are calculated.

More importantly, they are focusing on curbing tax evasion: requiring receipts from all vendors, limiting cash transactions to 1,000 euros (about 1,350 U.S. dollars), tax officials have raided exclusive ski resorts and yacht clubs in search of visitors whose claimed income levels would not permit them such luxuries, and they have tightened border controls (at one point nabbing an Italian man driving to Switzerland with his car loaded down with gold).

Further, they have started wading into the complex world of transfer pricing, seeking to prove that big multinational companies like Google and Facebook have illegally declared income generated in Italy in lower-tax jurisdictions beyond Italy's borders.

And they are negotiating a deal with Switzerland to gain access to assets illegally kept in that country by Italians so that it can be taxed.

The steps are having some effect: Italy's government deficit before Monti came into power was above 4 percent of the country's gross national product (GDP). That level first fell to below the 3-percent threshold the European Central Bank rules officially require of countries using the euro currency (the threshold is not enforced, since so many countries are over the required level) in late 2011.

By the time mid-year figures for 2012 were released, Italy's National Statistics Institute, ISTAT, reported the level was 2.8 percent. And it fell to 1.8 percent in the third quarter of 2012, according to statistics released earlier this month, despite the fact that GDP at the end of the third quarter was smaller than it was a year earlier.

What it is not helping is Monti's bid to remain in power. Pollsters say he is slipping ever further behind favorite Gian Luigi Bersani heading into next month's national elections. The culprit? Pollsters put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the policies that saved Italy from default.

"Monti may have saved Italy's neck when it faced default fears, but the cost has been high for many Italians," said Maria Rossi, the co-director of the polling firm Opinioni.