During the Twentieth century, Italian joint-stock companies remained relatively small and tended to die young. This fact constrained the development of the full potential of the Italian industry, as small-dimensioned companies struggled to implement the most efficient technologies and managerial...

Inflation during the Napoleonic wars is a widely investigated and interesting case study; it generated a fantastic contemporary theoretical debate, which per se is a stimulating subject, ad provides a revealing perspective on more generic topics such as the gold standard, the Bank of England...

In the last twenty years the Italian economy showed claer signs of structural crisis. Using a variety of secondary literature, this paper claims that the recent decline must be seen as part of a long-term trend of sub-optimal performance driven by the inability of the country to remain congruent...