CFU: 6

Year: 2

Semester: II

Instructor: Piero Bini

The course of History of Economic Thought is made up of two parts. The first part provides an overview of the main economic theories and concepts from the mid-eighteenth century to the end of nineteenth century. The relative set of lectures will be of service as an introduction to the second part which concerns a particular topic of contemporaneous history of economic thought, i.e. the Italian one, from the Unification of Italy in 1861 to the present time. Particular attention will be deserve both to some leading Italian economists (such as Maffeo Pantaleoni, Vilfredo Pareto, Luigi Einaudi up to Piero Sraffa, Franco Modigliani, Luigi Spaventa and others), and to some economic topics selected with the mind oriented to the Italian economic policy and political history. I’m referring to a) The take-off of Italian economy at the end of the nineteenth century and first theories of economic cycle; b) The raising of public enterprise in Italy and the theory of natural monopoly from 1900 to the 1920s; c) The Corporative and fascist economics, and the making of economic policy in Italy during the interwar years (1922-1940); d) The major changes in Italian economic policy after the world war II (1950-1969); e) The Italian economists and the crisis of the Nineteen-seventies; the parable of the “Conflict Paradigm” (1969-1985); f) How to escape from the global and Euro crisis according to the divergent opinions of the Italian economists (2008-2015).

A particular attention will be given to the relationship between the evolution of economic theories and the public policies recommended by the most representative Italian economists in the historical phases mentioned before.

The didactic materials are constituted by a collection of texts elaborated by the teacher made available in pdf and ppt.