The paper discusses the contribution of R. H. Coase to economics and his role as a founder of the new institutional economics. Coase also contributed to the establishment of Law and Economics as a discipline, he is the author of the transaction cost theory and of the Coase Theorem. The paper...

The Latin American debt crisis, which broke out in August 1982, was the first global financial crisis in the postwar period. While the crisis started in the "periphery", it constituted a threat to the "core" of the world economy, as the banking system was under severe pressure. Alongside the...

On 15 October 2011 the Italian economist Pierangelo Garegnani passed away. The article reviews Garegnani’s main contributions to economic theory by showing how they frequently gave raise to wide and relevant debates. The obituary highlights the salience of Garegnani’s analysis also for a...

The paper outlines the intellectual biography of Paolo Sylos Labini, a great economist with strong civic ideals. After recalling his education (in Rome, then at Harvard with Schumpeter and at Cambridge with Robertson), the paper illustrates his contributions in a variety of fields, ranging from...

The article recounts Luigi Spaventa's academic career, regularly alternated with periods in which he served as "technical" civil servant, in several ministerial committees and as a member of the Italian Parliament. Spaventa contributed to the development of the Department of Economics of...

This paper tries to highlight some essential elements that emerge from Luigi Pasinetti's work. Much of the research project that Pasinetti developed, especially in the 1981 book, was already present in nuce in the 1974 collection of essays. Here the theory of effective demand is presented for...