European leaders, who have long questioned Mr. Berlusconi’s commitment to fundamental economic changes, had become especially concerned that he no longer had enough control of his coalition to deliver on promises of crucial reforms and that in a crisis built partly on perception, Italy’s reputation was too closely linked to his own.

In a sign of the seriousness of the fears, a delegation from the European Commission was due in Rome on Wednesday to check on the country’s reform program, days after the International Monetary Fund said it would monitor Italy’s progress, a rare intrusion for an economy the size of Italy’s.

Mr. Berlusconi’s announcement came just days after Greece’s leader, Prime Minister George A. Papandreou , also overcome by financial troubles, agreed to resign in favor of a unity government.

The immediate trigger for Mr. Berlusconi’s decision was a procedural vote in Parliament that made it clear that he had lost his majority after defections from his coalition. Umberto Bossi , a crucial ally and the leader of the Northern League, a coalition member, said he had told the prime minister to step aside for the good of the country.

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After the parliamentary vote, a photographer’s zoom lens caught Mr. Berlusconi writing “8 traitors” on a piece of paper on which he had also written “resignation.”

Hours later, he met with the president of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano, and said he would resign.

A statement issued by the president’s office after the meeting said that the prime minister had acknowledged “the implications of the result of the day’s vote in the lower house,” but at the same time had expressed “concerns” about the need to pass the urgent reforms requested by Italy’s “European partners.”

In a telephone call to the state broadcaster RAI, Mr. Berlusconi said, “Today’s vote reinforced my concerns about the moment that we are experiencing, a situation where the markets do not believe that we really want to introduce the liberalizing measures that Europe insistently asked us to carry out.”

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By linking his fortunes to the austerity package — whose contents have not yet been made final — Mr. Berlusconi effectively blocked both the opposition and dissidents within his own party from bringing him down in a humiliating confidence vote over the measures.

His announcement, in a meeting with Mr. Napolitano, made the event seem almost anticlimactic, allowing Mr. Berlusconi to exit somewhat gracefully.

“It was the last act of the government and the only act where the government will have the support of the opposition,” said Massimo Franco, a commentator for the newspaper Corriere della Sera. “It’s a compromise that allows Berlusconi to buy some time before exiting the stage immediately and for the opposition to say that Berlusconi is falling.”

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Indeed, after Mr. Berlusconi’s announcement, the center-left opposition leader Pier Luigi Bersani called the prime minister’s decision a “turning point that we welcome with great satisfaction.”

To some, Mr. Berlusconi had quietly, if belatedly, followed the example of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain , who stepped aside to allow for early elections, causing market pressure on Spain to ease. “We are doing what Spain did months ago,” Mr. Calabresi of La Stampa said. “If we’d done it sooner we would have avoided more trouble.”

On Tuesday, yields on 10-year Italian government bonds — the price demanded by investors to loan Italy money — approached 7 percent, the highest level since the adoption of the euro 10 years ago and close to levels that have required other euro zone countries to seek bailouts.

After Mr. Berlusconi’s pledge to resign, stocks rallied in New York on hopes that political change would help pave the way for an easing of the European debt crisis.

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While the fundamentals of Italy’s economy are much stronger than those of Greece, the country has a public debt of 120 percent of its gross domestic product, the highest in the euro zone after Greece, and structural problems that have led to low growth.

“The problem in Italy is not primarily the real data,” Germany ’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schaüble, said in Brussels on Tuesday. “The debt is high, the deficit is not — economic data are not that bad. The problem is a lack of trust from the financial markets.”

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Last summer, Italy pushed through two sets of austerity measures that financial markets deemed insufficient to bolster the economy and make a dent in its huge public debt of 1.9 trillion euros, or about $2.6 trillion.

Last month, Mr. Berlusconi pledged to the European Union that he would approve a new round of restructuring, including the privatization of some state assets and the loosening of labor laws, but his promises did little to quell market anxieties.

Mr. Berlusconi’s commitment to resign “is a piece of very good news,” said Thomas Klau, the director of the Paris office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. He said Mr. Berlusconi’s style of leadership had become “a major factor in impairing Italy’s credibility and undermining confidence in the ability of the Italian government to restore public finances and engage in meaningful reform.”

For all the relief on Tuesday, it is unclear that Mr. Berlusconi’s exit would solve Italy’s problems in the long run since any government that follows will be left to carry out tough austerity measures in a system built on political patronage.

“The real problem is that in reality, the austerity bill is an empty box into which they have to put things that will be very unpopular,” said Mario Deaglio, a professor of economics at the University of Turin.

“I think that they will try to fill it with lemons, with minor measures,” he added, noting that over the years Italian governments have promised to sell off state assets in dozens of austerity packages “without ever selling a thing.”

Mr. Berlusconi’s own future is also unclear because of the court cases against him. The day he stops being prime minister, he risks losing legal immunity .

Mr. Berlusconi, who is 75, served his first brief term as prime minister in 1994, returned for several years starting in 2001 and began his latest term in 2008.