Eraldo Fossati, un economista di transizione tra Pareto e Keynes

Abstract

Eraldo Fossati (1902-1962) can be recognized as one of the most important exponents of the Paretian school in Italy. Fossati’s thinking on economic dynamic theory can be assigned to two different phases although they derive from a single design. In the first period he presented a formal model of the Austrian approach in which subjective uncertainty played a key role. As a mathematical economist he pursued the aim of obtaining a formal model but this attempt was not successful. The mathematical apparatus was modest, based on the traditional differential calculus together with a loss function assumed ad hoc. In the period following WW2 Fossati’s research took a very different path. On the one hand, he stressed the need to strengthen the in-ternational scope of Italian economists by founding a new journal, «Metroeconomica». On the other hand, in contrast with the majority of Italian economists, he found in Keynes’s General Theory a new source for framing dynamic analysis. Although the Paretian equilibrium consti-tuted a great conquest at the theoretical level, the economic reality facing the economist was very far from these ideal conditions and had to be analyzed with instruments that were perhaps less sophisticated but more useful in order to explain economic phenomena. There is no doubt that he contributed in a significant manner to the renewal of economic research in Italy, sup-porting the passage from a static and abstract vision to a dynamic and empirical one