Recent historiography on the interest of Italian economists in American economic thought is becoming rich and valuable. Thanks to these sources, we know that this interest arose because several Italian economists were attracted by the realism featured in North American economic investigation, by...

The modern labour market policy of flexicurity has been adopted as a leitmotiv of the European employment strategy and the revised Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Jobs. This paper examines the two main influences behind the concept of flexicurity, namely the New Keynesian active labour market...

Giacinto Dragonetti è l’autore di un piccolo libro, Delle virtù e de’ premi (1766) che associato al più celebre Dei delitti e delle pene (1764) di Cesare Beccaria, ebbe un significa- tivo successo nell’Europa dei lumi pre-rivoluzionaria. Il libro è costruito attorno all’idea che alle...

The paper provides a critical assessment of Adolphe Landry’s contributions to the theory of capital and interest. His analysis represents one among several variants of marginal productivity theory. The distinguishing feature of his variant is that he considers entrepreneurship a scarce factor...

In the two decades before World War I, Irving Fisher and his French contemporary Adolphe Landry presented and extended Boehm-Bawerk’s theory capital and interest, although both of them criticized Boehm-Bawerk’s concept of an average period of production. They analyzed each other’s work on...

Scitovsky laid the foundations for a new theory of people’s well-being in his 1976 book The Joyless Economy. This paper, after a reconstruction of Scitovsky’s analysis throughout the book and his related writings, shows that supporting evidence can be found in recent economic and psychology...

In his work Arbeit und Boden (Labor and Land) (1889) Otto Effertz outlined the foundations of a "Ponophysiocracy". This book which in its final, strongly modified version Les Antagonismes économiques was published in 1906, had a stronger impact on Adolphe Landry, who praises as well as...

This paper documents Richard Kahn’s role as an unofficial advisor to the Israeli Government, using archival and published sources. In 1957, Kahn predicted that the European Economic Community (EEC) customs union would harm Israel’s trade and that the EEC would reject Israel’s application...

Antonio Serra wrote in 1613 an outstanding analysis, on the economy of the Reign of Naples, which is still very little known out of Italy; where he is largely recognized as the founder of the "Southern question". This article proposes a larger view of Serra’s pioneering achievements, by...

Harriet Taylor has been long forgotten as an economist and political philosopher, while merely remembered as John Stuart Mill’s friend and belatedly wife. Never was fate more unjust: we only need to recall that Taylor - whose liberal background soon led her to be fascinated by socialist...