Between 1954 and 1955, in the context of a project launched by the Unesco social research section on the effects of agrarian reform in Italy, Manlio Rossi-Doria took on responsibility for and coordination of the surveys to be carried out at Scandale, a commune in the Marquisate of Crotone, in...

Few economists choose to write memoirs, and of those who do most adopt the "logic of my contributions£ approach. Tibor Scitovsky, Hungarian-born theorist who spent most of his career at Stanford and Berkeley, instead left us unpublished recollections, many of his childhood, others bearing on...

This article introduces the collection of the translated versions of a number of essays published in Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Sociali (RISS) during the 1940s and 1950s, under the directorship of Francesco Vito. More generally, this essay deals with the diverse topics discussed in RISS...

The crux of this paper is that behind the ideal motivations and trends converged in the formation of the Partito d’Azione there lay in the first place a process of reappraisal of the history of modern Italy. To begin with, there was recognition of the deficiencies of the Risorgimento and...

This short paper is an affectionate attempt to summarize in a few pages the career of Frederic M. Scherer who since more than five decades unremittingly holds a key role within the discipline labelled as Industrial Organization. Naturally the wide-ranging scholarship and the multi-faceted...

May the history of economic thought be a useful device for addressing a sustainable path towards economic and financial recovery from the Great Financial Depression and the nowadays Sovereign Debt Crises? According to Cicero the answer should be predictable: ‘‘Historia, magistra vitae’’,...

In this essay, I review Sylvia Nasar's long awaited new history of economics, <em>Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius</em>. I describe how the book is an economic history of the period 1850-1950, with distinguished economists' stories inserted in appropriate places. Nasar's goal is to show how...

Condemnation or glorification of luxury is a classic and recurrent question in the history of political ideas. Today, it continues to generate a set of conflicting emotions. In order to understand this debate, we chose to immerse ourselves in the history of economic thought, and, more...

This paper shows that Pigou’s theory of unemployment, contrary to what Keynes thought, does not assume states of full employment only, but offers an analysis of situations of persistent underemployment which are not necessarily associated with labour market supply factors. Indeed, Pigou’s...

Bei der Rezeption der ordoliberalen Freiburger Schule wurde bislang die wirtschaftsethische Perspektive weitgehend vernachlaessigt. Der Aufsatz gibt vertiefte Einblicke in das ethisch-normative Denken des Ordoliberalismus am Beispiel des Werks von Walter Eucken. Dabei wird es neben der...