Sraffa’s Ricardo after Fifty Years - A Preliminary Estimate

It is the purpose of this paper to put Sraffa's Ricardo (Ricardo, 1951-73) in a historical perspective. After almost fifty years this appears to be timely on two grounds. First, as we shall have occasion to recall below, Sraffa had been singularly enshrined and made into a bloodless entity for a considerable time; only today it becomes possible to revive his image in flesh and blood and it seems proper to do so. Second the Sraffa archives at Trinity College have now been made accessible and it is expected that permission can be granted to make use of the extant documents for the purpose.

Economia Civile

The present booklet puts together a few short contributions on the recent work by Stefano Zamagni and Luigino Bruni on the notion of civil economy. Among recent works by historians (perhaps the best known is Robert Putnam’s work on the Italian civic tradition), economists and social scientists, the book here discussed deserves a special place for delving into the history of economic thought as a method of finding new ways and establishing new paradigms in economic theorizing. After an introductory exposé by the editor, the booklet hosts a comment by Gloria Vivenza (University of Verona) which traces some the Classical roots of the notion of civil economy. Thomas Hobbes notoriously changed the phrase homo homini deus, which is sometimes quoted from Caecilius Statius, into homo homini lupus. The latter also, indeed, comes from Roman playwriters and is commonly attributed to Plautus. Today we have to go back to Statius’s sentence if we aim at an understanding of reciprocity, which is the core concept of this book. Gloria Vivenza, as a scholar on the Greek and Roman background of Political Economy, is an excellent guide in the field. The subsequent comment by Roberto Scazzieri (University of Bologna, now visiting at the University of Cambridge) puts the notion of civil economy in context with some of main strands of economic thought in the 18th century. In particular Scazzieri’s contribution highlights similarities and differences between the Italian civic tradition and the Scottish paradigm. Finally a young scholar from the Bocconi University, Francesco Boldizzoni, adds his remarks on the formative stages of the civic humanist paradigm in Italy and on the proliferation of the paradigm in Europe and, more particularly, in Britain. This booklet is closed by ‘conclusions’ by the authors of the book. The comments given here were first presented at the 8th annual Conference of ESHET, the European Society of the History of Economic Thought, held in Treviso 27-29 February 2004. A special session of the Treviso Conference was organized by the editor the present booklet on the concept of Economia civile. Thanks are due to the authors of the various comments for readily making their texts available for reproduction in this booklet. An obligation must be recorded also to dr. Elisa Portale, who has been helpful in the editing of this booklet.

Employment, Technology and Institutions in the Process of Structural Change. A History of Economic Thought Perspective

The present issue of the Working Papers series of the Dipartimento di Economia Politica at Milano- Bicocca reproduces the contributions presented at the mid-year ESHET Conference which took place at the Universities of Pavia and Milano-Bicocca on 16 and 17 November 2001. The program was arranged jointly by Gianni Vaggi and Pier Luigi Porta and the Conference was jointly organised by ESHET with the Department of Political Economy and Quantitative Methods of the University of Pavia and the Department of Political Economy of the University of Milano-Bicocca. The idea around which the Conference was built referred basically to Luigi Pasinetti’s conception of structural change and structural dynamics in a history-of-thought perspective. Luigi Pasinetti, Eshet’s first President, opened the Conference at the University of Pavia. The program included two sessions taking half a day each: the opening session was in Pavia on 16 November 2001 and the final session in Milan the 17 November. Luigi Pasinetti chaired the session held at the University of Pavia and Andrew Skinner was the chairman in Milan.

Towards an Economic Theory of International Civil Society Trust, Trade and “Open Government”

This paper discusses the recent revival of interest in the concept of civil society and explores its possible utilization in the analysis of a cluster of relationships and processes that we shall denote with the concept of international civil society. The ambition of this paper is to cast the discussion on civil society into an original theoretical mould. In particular, the elaboration of what will be called an 'economic theory of civil society' will be attempted by following a sequence of logical steps. First, the conceptual field of civil society will be explored by considering the historical setting in which the early discussion and later evolution of the concept took place. Against such a background, we shall then proceed to outline a logical framework which decomposes the concept of civil society into a number of constitutive elements, such as trust, commercial society, division of labour, horizontal (or 'civil') network of interpersonal relationships. Such an analytical exercise is carried out with the aim of developing a consistent theoretical framework that is stimulated by the classical discussion on civil society, but attempts to develop it beyond the interpretative framework of the classical writers. The main purpose of the paper is thus analytical rather than historical: a theoretical approach is followed in order better to explore the manifold implications of the classical concepts and to bring to the fore the virtual relationships and processes that may be identified on the basis of the classical framework. In this way economic theory will be used in order to detect unknown or unexplored relationships, rather than in order to explain phenomena that are already known. Such an approach is then applied in the exploration of the concept of 'international civil society', which is considered to be especially interesting for the theoretical (virtual) possibilities it highlights, and also for the manifold implications it may have in the interpretation of current historical events.3 We demonstrate that the notion of international civil society emphasizes the role of trust, together with the relationships of trust with the 'translation procedures' of exchange and the division of labour. Against such a background, issues linked with the emergence and persistence of international money are considered. Finally the paper hints at some of the implications of the concept of international civil society in the analysis of the logical and historical conditions for 'partnership equilibrium'.

Pietro Verri’s Contribution to the Economic Theory of the 18th Century: Commercial Society, Civil Society and Governance of the Economy

'Count Pietro Verri (1728-97) - Schumpeter writes (History, p. 178) - - would have to be included in any list of the greatest economists'. Within the Milanese school, he certainly stands out, alongside with Cesare Beccaria, during one of the most interesting periods from a history of analysis point of view. Luigi Cossa's famous introduction to the study of political economy rates Pietro Verri to be inferior to Beccaria in ingenuity and scientific cultivation, but greatly to be ahead of him as an economist.1 This judgement by Cossa, in particular, seems to echo the relative position of the two men in the history of ideas, particularly after Beccaria's rise to fame with a book - On crimes and punishments - which had in fact been largely inspired by Verri himself and defended by him.2 It is proposed in the present paper to revisit some of the basic tenets of Pietro Verri's political economy, with more in view than dwell on specific intuitions and theorems: namely relate those to Verri's own - quite original - conception of the economy. The scholarly work of Pietro Verri - with a special reference to his Meditazioni sulla economia politica of 1771 - provides the first systematic contribution stemming from the quarters of Lombard enlightenment in the field of political economy, especially so if one considers that Cesare Beccaria's parallel work - namely his Elementi di economia pubblica, conceived and drafted at the same time as Verri's Meditazioni - would only be published posthumously several years later. From the vantage point afforded by Verri's political economy, we gain a considerably attractive view of the most significant elements and characteristic concepts of Lombard enlightenment during the latter half of the 18th century; Verri, moreover, as we shall see, builds on a number of them in a new and original way. This paper is aimed at discussing Verri's political economy mainly along two distinct, but related, lines. In the first place the conception of commercial society is considered such as it is treated by the author particularly in his Meditazioni. In this perspective the analysis of such issues as competition and the market or money and taxation occupy a central place. Secondly it will be necessary to emphasise that Verri's approach has little to do either with forms of pure economics on one side - largely yet to be born throughout the 18th century - or, on the other side, with such conceptions of the polis - contrariwise well alive among his own contemporaries - as are founded on a sovereign authority conceived to be situated above the law. What Verri's political economy ultimately amounts to is an economic conception of civil society. The latter has natural strong connections with his own fact-mindedness - emphasised by Schumpeter - as well as with his deep practical involvement in administrative affairs and in the reforming process taking place during the latter half of the 18th century in Milan. In our view, a thorough investigation along the mentioned lines is the precondition for an understanding of the intellectual stature and of the scholarly contribution of Pietro Verri. His main ground is distinctly analytical and only by appreciating his analysis is it possible to shed light on the meaning and intellectual significance also of his practical contributions. Moreover Verri's pronouncements on the criticism of despotic government, the relevance of intermediate powers or bodies and on multiple levels of governance will be examined in a new and original light, showing how close they are to the gist of his analysis.

I fallimenti della libertà

This paper takes advantage from Mauro Magatti's recent book and it treats of liberty within the context of what is today called 'new progressivism'. New progressivism embodies the canons of the globalized economy: it is argued here that it propounds a number of interesting principles. It appears, however, at the same time unable to tackle the funda-mental imbalance of the world economy today, namely its financial excesses. Finally it boils down mainly to a new and extreme form of anti-Statism, which may prove dangerous. Another limitation comes from its exclusive emphasis on economic problems per se

Pension Systems and Reforms: a Note on Transition Problems

The purpose of this chapter is to focus on some of the major problems of the existing pension systems. It is currently held that those systems exhibit fundamental imbalances which call for radical reform. It is in fact a widely shared view that current systems are unsustainable: hence the questions concerning the design of reform, together with the associated problem of identifying feasible patterns of transition from the inherited system to the reformed one. Accordingly the first issue to be addressed will be to highlight the fundamental imbalances affecting the existing systems and illustrate how they have come into being historically. Then the issue of the transition patterns will be tackled with reference to alternative reform designs; the argument, on this second point, will be mostly theoretical. Finally our considerations will be brought to bear on the actual features and on the current progress of the systems of the five countries treated in this report and a judgment on feasibility and likely prospects will be formulated. A questionnaire has been prepared for the five countries in this project. It is worth mentioning immediately that the problem of transition is currently understood to revolve basically around two main points. A first point concerns measures for starting a path leading from a redistributive or pay-as-you-go system back to the saving-insurance principle or, in other words, to a funded system; a second point touches on the share of private insurers in the pension business. Through tackling our question we expect to contribute to put such and similar issues in a proper perspective. The analysis of the kind of unsustainability involved here will allow us to see how far the proposed measures can actually promise to cope with the inherent problems. The current conventional wisdom on the transition issue calls for immediate clarification. It will be seen below that pension systems can be classified with respect to a number of contrasting characteristics, so that in principle it is possible to think of transitions between all the possible states defined in terms of all the sets of compatible characteristics. However, historically, taking the experience of major western European industrial systems into account, a few specific sets of characteristics need contrasting. Basically, we propose to focus on a few contrasting characteristics: payg vs. funded, defined benefit vs. defined contribution systems and redistributional vs. actuarial ones. The above clusters of characteristics provide important schemes to understand the present situation. Looking at future arrangements and at the transitions to them, it will be necessary to be more imaginative and also think of new schemes.

Paolo Sylos Labini as a historian of economics

L’objet de ce texte est de mettre en évidence l’originalité des travaux de Paolo Sylos Labini en matière d’histoire de la pensée économique. Sa première partie analyse la mesure dans laquelle on peut faire de cet auteur un disciple de Joseph Schumpeter. La deuxième partie décrit comment l’approche théorique de Sylos Labini peut être caractérisée comme une combinaison originale de recours à la dynamique économique et d’utilisation de l’histoire de la pensée. La dernière partie porte sur le rapport de Sylos Labini à Sraffa en tant qu’homme et en tant qu’économiste. Le texte conclut que Sylos Labini appartient incontestablement à une génération d’économistes italiens qui continuaient à assimiler une étude sérieuse de l’histoire de la pensée économique à une partie aussi importante que nécessaire de leur recherche en économie.The purpose of the paper is to bring out the special characters of Paolo Sylos Labini experience concerning his work on the history of the discipline. It includes three successive parts. The first investigates the extent to which Sylos Labini can be considered as a Schumpeterian scholar. The second exhibits how Sylos Labini’s economic analysis offers a specific combination of economic dynamic and history of economic thought. The last part concerns Sylos Labini attitude towards Sraffa seen both as a man and an economist. The paper concludes showing how Sylos Labini belongs to a generation of Italian economists who continued to consider a serious study of the history of the discipline as an important part of their research work as economists

Ricardo, David

A reconstruction of the philosophical, religious and political background of Ricardo's work as an economis