Post-unification Italy was part of a wider world within which men and money circulated freely; it developed to the extent that those mobile resources chose to locate on its soil. The economy's cyclical movements reflected conditions in international financial markets, and were little affected by domestic policies. State intervention restricted the internal and international mobility of goods, and limited Italy's development: it kept the economy weak, reduced Italy's weight in the comity of nations, and paved the way for the frustrations and adventurism that would plunge the twentieth century into world war.

A brief, up-to-date account of Italy's transformation from an agrarian state to an industrial powerhouse.

This book is the first to provide English readers with a brief and comprehensive survey of economic life in Italy during the period of its greatest splendour: the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The wealth of Renaissance Italy was the product of centuries of growth, and the great Renaissance cities, Venice, Milan and Florence, were first and foremost centres of international trade, which taught the rest of Europe the rudiments of modern business techniques. In a masterly synthesis, based upon a lifetime of study and research, Professor Gino Luzzatto, the greatest of living Italian historians, describes the main changes in Italian economic conditions from the end of the Roman Empire, when Italy ceased to be the centre of a European state, to the end of the Middle Ages when Italy lost the leadership of European trade and banking. The narrative chapters, which deal with barbarian Italy, feudal Italy and Italy in the age of the communes, are followed by a valuable analysis of medieval agriculture, industry, commerce and finance, in her principal Italian states. The range of discussion is wide and offers an excellent introduction to the economic history not only of Italy but of the whole Mediterranean region. This classic text was first published in 1961.

This Oxford Handbook provides a fresh overall view and interpretation of the modern economic growth of one of the largest European countries, whose economic history is less known internationally than that of other comparably large and successful economies. It will provide, for the first time, a comprehensive, quantitative "new economic history" of Italy. The handbook offers an interpretation of the main successes and failures of the Italian economy at a macro level, the research--conducted by a large international team of scholars --contains entirely new quantitative results and interpretations, spanning the entire 150-year period since the unification of Italy, on a large number of issues. By providing a comprehensive view of the successes and failures of Italian firms, workers, and policy makers in responding to the challenges of the international business cycle, the book crucially shapes relevant questions on the reasons for the current unsatisfactory response of the Italian economy to the ongoing "second globalization." Most chapters of the handbook are co-authored by both an Italian and a foreign scholar.

This book provides the non-Italian scholar with an extensive picture of the development of Italian economics, from the Sixteenth century to the present. The thread of the narrative is the dialectics between economic theory and political action, where the former attempts to enlighten the latter, but at the same time receives from politics the main stimulus to enlarge its field of reflection. This is particularly clear during the Enlightenment. Inside, this book insists on stressing that Galiani, Verri, and Beccaria were economists quite sensitive to practical issues, but who also were willing to attain generally valid conclusions. In this sense, "pure economics" was never performed in Italy. Even Pareto used economics (and sociology) in order to interpret and possibly steer the course of political action. Within this book it illustrates the Restoration period (1815-48). There was a slowdown of the economists' engagement, due to an adverse political situation, that prompted the economists to prefer less dangerous subjects, such as the relationship between economics, morals, and law (the main interpreter of this attitude was Romagnosi). After 1848, however, in parallel with the Risorgimento cultural climate, a new vision of the economists' task was eventually manifested. Between economics and political Liberalism a sort of alliance was established, whose prophet was F. Ferrara. While the Historical school of economics of German origin played a minor role, Pure Economics (1890-1940 approx.) had a considerable success, as regards both economic equilibrium and the theory of public finance. Consequently, the introduction of Keynes's ideas was rather troubled. Instead, Hayek had an immediate success. This book concludes with a chapter devoted to the intense relationships between economic theories, economic programmes and political action after 1945. Here, the Sraffa debate played an important role in stimulating Italian economists to a reflection on the patterns of Italian economy and the possibilities of transforming Italy's economic and social structure.

This book, first published in 1990, examines Italy’s economic history from its Unification in 1850 to the end of the First World War. Particular attention is paid to the extent to which Italy exhibits the features of Kaznets’s model of ‘modern economic growth’. An Economic History of Liberal Italy begins with a quantitative assessment of Italy’s long-term growth in this period. All of the main relevant variables – including production, consumption, investment, foreign trade, government spending, and welfare – are discussed. The book proceeds through a chronological account of the developments of the economy during this period, and concludes with a critical survey of the relevant historiography. Throughout the book emphasis is given to structural changes, to developments in the main industries, to the relations between different sectors of the economy, and to economic policies. This book is ideal for those studying economics of Italian history.

This book gives a full account of the economic and social history of Italy since unification (1860), with an introduction covering the previous period since the Middle Ages. The Economic History of Italy represents a scholarly and authoritative account of Italy's progress from a rural economy to an industrialized nation. The book makes a broad division of the period into three parts: the take-off (1860-1913), the consolidation in the midst of two wars and a world depression (1914-47), and the great expansion (1948-1990). Professor Zamagni traces the growth of industrialization, and argues that despite several advanced areas Italy only became an industrialized nation after the Second World War, and that during the 1980s the South was still clearly behind the rest of the country. Zamagni analyses data both from a macroeconomic position, in looking at the growth of the finance sector, or the role of the State, and from a microeconomic position when she draws conclusions from the changing population structure, or from the actions of individual businesses. Professor Zamagni reveals that even though the population more than doubled during this time the level of national income rose 19-fold, to move Italy from a peripheral status in Europe to a central position as a prosperous country. A central theme of the book is Professor Zamagni's argument that the Italian economy has been successful not by any great individuality of its own but by being flexible enough to incorporate the successes of other countries: Japan's integrated business network, for example, or Germany's financial structure. She places the industrialization of Italy in the international context by comparing Italy's GDP and other measures of prosperity at different times to the USA, Japan, the UK, France, and Germany. The book is based on original field-work by the author, and the many detailed but small-scale studies existing in Italian. Quantitative trends are described in more than 70 tables of data, while the book provides appendices containing chronologies of main events in various sectors and biographies.