monika poettinger

ABSTRACT As of a consequence of the ongoing economic crisis, in 2010 there was a marked deterioration in cross-border relations between Italy and Germany. In both countries the press published articles openly blaming economic hardship on the squandering attitude of southerners or the egoistic and mercantilist policies of northerners. The reigning confusion among economists, split between pro-and anti-Euro positions in both countries, could do nothing to counter this growing wave of populist nationalism. Out of this situation grew the idea of a organizing a conference to discuss the theoretical issues implied by recent economic policy debates, purging them of ideological and nationalistic overtones. This volume publishes the proceedings of the resulting international colloquium, «Economic crisis and new nationalisms: German economic policy as perceived by European partners», which was organized by the Foundation Cesifin Alberto Predieri and held in Florence in November 2012

The outcome of the Franco-Prussian war and the unification of Germanyirreversibly altered Europe's political equilibrium and with it theideological predominance of French culture on the Continent. This wasparticularly true for the young economic science. The predominance ofAnglo-French economic liberalism had had its culmination in 1860 withthe Cobden Chevalier Treaty, sanctioning not only the commitment ofGreat Britain and France to free trade but also the proximity of their traditions in economic thought. The emergence, though, in the subsequent decade of new national bodies in Italy and Germany brought to the forefrontthe necessity to justify institutional changes and profound reforms inlaw and polities, a feat done summoning the historical evolution of societies more than endorsing individual freedom. Eisenach was the German answer, Milan the Italian one. Both congresses, held in 1872 and 1875 respectively, harshly condemned the inhuman working conditions, for women and children, entailed in the industrialization process and consequently invoked the intervention of the State in the name of moral principles. Contingency was so the excuse of pervading policies that could be adapted to different situations in space and time. Liberalists could not accept such turn in economic science. Across borders, alarmed reviews of the two Congresses were printed, translated and commented, journals were even founded with the intent to refute or diffuse the new theories. The ensuing "Methodenstreit" became a powerful means to diffuse economic thinking in the whole of Europe, stimulating international reviewing of economic books and articles and the translation of economic texts.

The paper is based on extensive research done in Milan's Chamber of Commerce. The resulting database of 176 founding acts of businesses registered in the 1850s allows an unique insight in the functioning mechanisms of Lombardy's economy: how liquidity was collected and distributed, how partnerships were formed, inside which social circles were partners found, how much kinship ties determined business decisions, what criteria proved relevant in the investment decision making processes, how were innovation and entrepreneurship rewarded. Based on the richness of the data collected several conclusions were drawn on business forms, partners characteristics and innovation. The picture emerging from the sample vindicates the capacity of Milan's merchant elite to foster innovation through the efficient allocation of capital and the creation of entrepreneurial capital, averting at the same time disastrous financial crises: the solid base of the successive development of the region.

ABSTRACT The 1980s witnessed a renewed interest in the Wiener Kreis and logical empiricism . New historiographical accounts were dedicated to its principal components and their works have been widely republished. Among them also one of the most controversial adherents to the first Vienna circle: Otto Neurath (1882-1945) . Once stigmatized as a volcanic revolutionary, poor in theory as rich in reforming enthusiasm, Neurath has been rediscovered as an astonishingly modern theorist of the philosophy of science, capable of anticipating the much later positions of Kuhn and Feyerabend. Neurath’s role as an economist, though, has been much more neglected, even if recently his economic writings have been republished and partially translated in English . A quite astonishing occurrence, given that Neurath begun his scientific and academic career as an economist with an outstanding curriculum and participated in all debates of his time, discussing in depth central themes from the theory of value, to the method of social sciences, from the normative content of economics to the possibility of socialist calculation, to quote just the most renown. Due to the vehemence of these debates, contemporaries judged Neurath’s accomplishments rather with contempt than appreciation. Nonetheless the silence of historiography for most of the remaining twentieth century is not easily understandable, particularly in the field of economic thought. The main difficulty in evaluating Neurath’s economic theory lies in his radical redefinition of the economic science as such, based on his empiricist, or better even ‘physicalist’, approach. The first section of this paper will so be dedicated to briefly introduce Neurath’s idea of science and of the role scientists should have in society. How his epistemology resulted from of his experience in reforming economic science in the first decades of the twentieth century will also be briefly illustrated. The second section of the paper will then relate how Neurath, in the course of the years comprised between the publication of his doctoral dissertation in 1906 and his essay on Das Begriffsgebäude der Wirtschaftslehre und seine Grundlagen in 1917, completely revolutionized the idea of economics, refuting both the approach of the historical school represented by Gustav Schmoller, one of his supervisors in Berlin, and the sistematic of the school of Vienna he already attacked participating to the seminar held by Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk in 1906. Neurath so redefined economics in an holistic effort to reduce to unity all the opposing positions inflaming the economic debates of those troubled years, giving life to a science that could equally make space for abstracting models and empirical verification; a science that applied the same methodology to the study of a market economy and of socialization processes; a science that could comprise List’s cosmopolitan economy as a contemporary war economy. Although being quite revolutionary in its outcome, Neurath’s definition of economics rested heavily on the past of the discipline. In his view, no science could and should be rebuild completely, starting with a tabula rasa. From Aristotle to Smith, from Quesnay to Sismondi, all economists had still something useful to contribute to the advancement of science. What once had been cast away could find new validity in some novel form or in a restricted field. History was so an indispensable part of the economist’s toolkit. As described in the paper, many features of Neurath’s economics reveal today a striking modernity, justifying the necessity of a new and more complete evaluation of his role in the history of economic thought.

This essay analyses several writings of Carlo Lorenzini, published on jour-nals, newspapers and collections, reconstructing the enlightened pedagogical principles applied in composing his masterpiece, The Adventures of Pinoc-chio, and also his assumptions in regard the path of history and the role of education in the bettering of society. The process of humanization of Pinoc-chio will also be represented as the experience of all children, aged eight to twelve, on the verge of adulthood in the land of freedom of choice and moral-ity building. Lastly, the work of Lorenzini will be contextualised in the his-tory of Tuscany in the decades of Italy’s unification, showing the disap-pointment of Lorenzini with the results of the institutionalisation process of the new state, harming the freedom of its citizen, not least by imposing bourgeois values through compulsory education.

The paper is based on extensive research done in Milan's Chamber of Commerce. The resulting database of 176 founding acts of businesses registered in the 1850s allows an unique insight in the functioning mechanisms of Lombardy's economy: how liquidity was collected and distributed, how partnerships were formed, inside which social circles were partners found, how much kinship ties determined business decisions, what criteria proved relevant in the investment decision making processes, how were innovation and entrepreneurship rewarded. Based on the richness of the data collected several conclusions were drawn on business forms, partners characteristics and innovation. The picture emerging from the sample vindicates the capacity of Milan's merchant elite to foster innovation through the efficient allocation of capital and the creation of entrepreneurial capital, averting at the same time disastrous financial crises: the solid base of the successive development of the region.

The outcome of the Franco-Prussian war and the unification of Germany irreversibly altered Europe’s political equilibrium and with it the ideological predominance of French culture on the Continent. This was particularly true for the young economic science, the most brilliant outcome of enlightenment. It had been political economy, with its natural laws, to justify the revolutionary claim to individual freedom, foundation of wealth and welfare. The predominance of this economic liberalism had had its culmination in 1860 with the Cobden Chevalier Treaty, sanctioning not only the commitment of Great Britain and France to free trade but also the proximity of their traditions in economic thought. The emergence, though, in the subsequent decade of new national bodies in Italy and Germany brought to the forefront the necessity to justify institutional changes and profound reforms in law and polities, a feat done summoning the historical evolution of societies more than endorsing individua...

Federico Caffè dedicò la sua vita di studioso alla diffusione, in accademia, tra i decisori economici del big business, big labour e big government , fino ai lettori di quotidiani e riviste indipendenti, di quei modelli possibili che emergevano da una lettura matura e variegata del passato storico italiano, dallo studio attento e non viziato di pregiudizio delle teorie di politica economica più recenti, fossero di eredità keynesiana o dedicate al welfare economics, ed infine dalla riscoperta di idealità passate e sconfitte, come la centralità del lavoro nella vita sociale. Di seguito si analizzerà proprio questo sforzo diffusivo dell’economista abruzzese, troppo facilmente e semplicemente riconducibile a quella “tradizione italiana dei grandi Maestri del passato che, a cominciare da Francesco Ferrara, non hanno mai circoscritto il loro impegno alla ricerca teorica e all’insegnamento, ma hanno svolto un’attiva opera divulgativa e polemica nella pubblicistica e si sono posti a disposi...

ABSTRACT As of a consequence of the ongoing economic crisis, in 2010 there was a marked deterioration in cross-border relations between Italy and Germany. In both countries the press published articles openly blaming economic hardship on the squandering attitude of southerners or the egoistic and mercantilist policies of northerners. The reigning confusion among economists, split between pro-and anti-Euro positions in both countries, could do nothing to counter this growing wave of populist nationalism. Out of this situation grew the idea of a organizing a conference to discuss the theoretical issues implied by recent economic policy debates, purging them of ideological and nationalistic overtones. This volume publishes the proceedings of the resulting international colloquium, «Economic crisis and new nationalisms: German economic policy as perceived by European partners», which was organized by the Foundation Cesifin Alberto Predieri and held in Florence in November 2012

Business Cycles in Economic Thought underlines how, over the time span of two centuries, economic thought interacted with cycles in a continuous renewal of theories and rethinking of policies, whilst economic actions embedded themselves into past economic thought. This book argues that studying crises and periods of growth in different European countries will help to understand how different national, political and cultural traditions influenced the complex interaction of economic cycles and economic theorizing. The editors of this great volume bring together expert contributors consisting of economists, historians of economic thought and historians of economics, to analyse crises and theories of the nineteenth and the twentieth century. This is alongside a comprehensive outlook on the most relevant advances of economic theory in France, Germany and Italy, as well as coverage of non-European countries, such as the United States. Several of the highly prestigious Villa Vigoni Trilateral Conferences formed the background for the discussions in this book. This volume is of great interest to students and academics who study history of economic thought, political economy and macroeconomics.

ABSTRACT As Napoleon swept up the Continent, European societies faced alter-native paths of modernization depending on thé elite capable of directing the change. In Lombardy, a region deprived of an own nation state and of independence, the only viable way to modernization was that of eco-nomic changes guided by the mercantilé elite. Not a nobility based on political participation, patriotism and civil rights but a nobility of work could substitute in Lombardy ancien régime values. Attracted, as Napoleon soldiers, by the richness and the entrepreneurial opportunities of northern Italy, many merchants crossed the Alps to set-tle down in Lombardy. They didn't bring warfare or pillages along them. Through their international networks they channelled into Lombardy capi-tal, skilled workers and entrepreneurial capabilities. But their influence on the Italian region was not limited to manufacturing, organizational or fi-nancial innovation. Through their economic and social ascent an example was set as to how, through hard work, economic if not political indepen-dence could be achieved. Even governments respected this wealth elite, being dependent on their availability to finance their growing public debt, on their intermediation to supply the necessary wares in a specializing and globalised Europe, and on their capability to employ the population in new manufactures. The reforms to make thi elite politically repre-sented were not unique to the French government. The Austrian rule that preceded and followed Napoleon in Lombardy went the same path. Such political recognition reinforced the influence of the cosmopolitan merchan elite on Lombardy's intellectuals and nobility. Around it rapidly coalesced a social grouping prone to innovation, liberalism, religious tolerance and favourable to federative aggregations. Beginning with the Napoleonic age such aggregation was capable of directing Lombardy's modernization well before Italy's political independence.

Il volume, in lingua tedesca, è suddiviso in quattro parti e copre circa cento anni di storia, dal XVIII al XIX secolo, durante i quali Milano è stata oggetto di migrazioni imprenditoriali e flussi commerciali che la legavano all’Europa grazie alla ricca produzione agricola. Da differenti stati tedeschi si giungeva a Milano per partecipare al commercio della seta, lavorare il cotone, importare le conoscenze del manufatto dall’Inghilterra, produrre e commercializzare prodotti in pelle. Si sono quindi venute a creare quelle reti commerciali che avrebbero dominato l’élite lombarda ed europea fino alla fine dell’Ottocento. La migrazione di operatori e tecnici tedeschi è cresciuta dalla metà del XIX secolo in poi. A poco a poco l’intera struttura economica della Lombardia è stata trasformata e si è visto un cambiamento anche nella migrazione per esigenze lavorative: i concessionari sono stati sostituiti dai rappresentanti e i tecnici dagli ingegneri. È emersa quindi una rete di aziende altamente specializzate nella produzione di gomma, plastica e beni di consumo. Grazie agli imprenditori tedeschi si è sviluppata la cultura per il lavoro e la fede nel progresso tecnologico, basi per lo sviluppo economico.

"Il volume analizza la figura del mercante partendo dalle civiltà mesopotamiche fino ad arrivare a metà Ottocento. Considerato un eroe capace di straordinarie imprese commerciali per il bene della collettività, nel Rinascimento si “traveste” da Mago che dona ricchezze alle città per ottenere il riconoscimento della società e delle più alte cariche governanti. Un balzo di qualche secolo e si arriva in piena epoca industrializzata: si definisce un’idea di mercante gretto, meschino e senza scrupoli, capace di tutto pur di raggiungere il proprio tornaconto. Chiude il volume un capitolo dedicato alla Milano ottocentesca e alla sua fiorente economia mercantile. Una volta unificata l’Italia, l’unica regione veramente industrializzata era la Lombardia e soprattutto il suo capoluogo, Milano: proprio qui nascono le prime associazioni e la prima Camera di Commercio. Durante l’arco temporale preso in considerazione emerge chiaramente la dicotomia tra l’interesse privato, spesso mal celato, del mercante che viene stigmatizzato come esempio di bassa moralità per l’incessante attività alla ricerca del profitto personale, e la nobiltà d’animo unita al disinteresse verso il proprio guadagno a fronte di un benessere più generale, ritenuto necessario per governare. "

ABSTRACT A lungo conservato presso l’Archivio del Senato della Repubblica e mai pubblicato prima d’ora, il testo rappresenta allo stesso tempo la summa del pensiero storico di Fanfani e il suo testamento politico. La pubblicazione, che riassume in sé un decennio di studi, si concentra su temi come le innovazioni tecnologiche della terza rivoluzione industriale, i loro effetti sull’occupazione e sulle strutture economiche e sociali, il rapporto tra la mutata struttura economica e le istituzioni, i cambiamenti nelle relazioni internazionali causati dai diversi gradi di sviluppo. “Di fronte ad un uomo che ha perso il controllo del suo agire economico”, spiega la curatrice, “quello di Fanfani è un grido di ribellione che risuona per tutto il secolo breve. Con l’enfasi del predicatore di un nuovo umanesimo, lo statista richiama l’uomo ad esercitare la sua volontà nell’indirizzare le proprie azioni e a riappropriarsi della responsabilità del progresso economico di tutta l’umanità”.

ABSTRACT Conference Proceedings Essays by Francesca Chiesi Ermotti  Dittmar Dahlmann  John R. Davis  Klaus Heller  Katharina Middel  Matthias Middell  Monika Poettinger  Maximiliane Rieder  Ezio Ritrovato  Wolfgang Sartor  Margrit Schulte Beerbühl

ABSTRACT Up to the nineteenth century, merchants extended networks of subsidiaries, correspondents and investments world-wide, becoming a major trigger of innovation and economic development. To guarantee the functioning of their international merchant houses, they had to adhere to a strict moral code. The resulting "moral communities" diffused everywhere the "freedom of merchants": work to fulfil oneself and obtain economic independence, wealth as a mean to social recognition. As the Ancien Régime neared its end, merchants were ready to economically and morally guide society into a new era. Many called into question the noblesse Commerçante, though, and philosophers and economists ridiculed merchant virtues, representing merchants as men bent only on profit and self-interest. The industrialist became, so, the bourgeoisie´s myth and merchant ethics vanished from the agenda of historians and economists alike. Industrialization thusly lost one of its main characters and economics missed a catalyst of innovation and social capital formation.

ABSTRACT Per i fiorentini del Quattrocento i rapporti economici erano regolati da precetti morali sanciti istituzionalmente dal governo cittadino o dal corpus teologico della scolastica, volgarizzato dagli ordini minori. La storia del pensiero economico di questo periodo, dunque, si è soprattutto preoccupata di studiare la variazione nel tempo di tali precetti, cercandovi una spia dell’affrancamento dell’homo oeconomicus dalla servitù religiosa, del prevalere della razionalità capitalistica su quella medievale. L’accurata disamina delle questioni del giusto prezzo, dell’usura e del giusto salario da parte dei predicatori francescani e domenicani sarebbero, in questo senso, la spia del soffocante impedimento che la religione, cattolica, poneva al libero esprimersi del mercato, ma anche, proprio a Firenze nel Quattrocento, del cumularsi di eccezioni e scappatoie che permettevano ai mercanti di prosperare nei traffici nonostante la contrarietà di fondo della Chiesa a riconoscere alla moneta un ruolo economico fruttifero ed allo scambio una sua giustizia intrinseca. La recente scoperta che i predicatori fiorentini del Quattrocento avrebbero semplicemente ripreso, temperandole, tesi ben precedenti, rende discutibile questa visione evoluzionista e positivista. Il pensiero economico, insomma, non avrebbe marciato di pari passo con il favoleggiato espandersi dell’economia di mercato su una linea del tempo che vuole il finire, proprio con il Quattrocento, del medioevo e l’inizio dell’età moderna. E’, allora, necessario ripensare la formulazione del pensiero economico fiorentino del Quattrocento, soprattutto quello espresso dagli ordini minori, inquadrandolo nel mutare vorticoso dell’assetto istituzionale, della struttura sociale, della vita economica della città. Non solo di idee si trattava in quel tempo ed in quel luogo: i precetti di teologi e predicatori su questioni economiche erano parte integrante dell’impalcatura normativa sulla quale si reggeva la vita cittadina. In questo senso l’affannoso cercare, da parte di pastori preoccupati della salute spirituale del proprio gregge, di ricostruire tramite precetti morali l’assenza di regole o il diffuso disattendere regole oramai considerate obsolete, è uno specchio della profonda crisi istituzionale che colse Firenze nella seconda metà del Quattrocento. Crisi alla quale si cercò soluzione non affrancando l’homo oeconomicus, ma piuttosto allontanando definitivamente i mercanti dal governo della città. Si sanciva così una rottura tra interesse privato e bene comune che perdurerà fino al Settecento della favola delle api di Bernard de Mandeville e della mano invisibile di Adam Smith. Di seguito si cercherà di inquadrare il pensiero economico del Quattrocento fiorentino proprio alla luce dell’evoluzione, nella teoria come nella pratica, del complesso rapporto tra attività privata volta al profitto ed attività pubblica volta al bene comune. Dapprima si esporranno le considerazioni in questo senso dei teologi e filosofi del tempo, per poi verificare, con l’analisi iconografica della figura dei Magi, quanto i mercanti del tempo si riconoscessero nel ruolo di produttori di ricchezza privata e pubblica. La crisi di questo modello valoriale e del corrispettivo assetto istituzionale sarà, infine, analizzata nelle sue cause e nelle sue conseguenze, anche per il successivo pensiero economico.

During the nineteenth century entrepreneurial migrations were a continent - and possibly world - wide phenomenon that had less to do with the absence of entrepreneurial forces in a certain location as with the circulation of human, entrepreneurial and venture capital triggered by the existence of far reaching networks of commercial origin. This was particularly true for Lombardy. Milan and its economic space were the recipients of direct investments of banks and merchant houses located in Switzerland, France and Germany and Lombardy's enterprises were often part of this kind of "verlagssystem" connections. These international networks organised production factors, circulated innovations, aided entrepreneurial migrations, managed risk, profited from market imperfections: absolved the entrepreneurial function. German entrepreneurs in Milan are a perfect example of the working and the successfulness of these networks. They were interlinked by religion and ascendancy but a...

The 1980s witnessed a renewed interest in the Wiener Kreis and logical empiricism . New historiographical accounts were dedicated to its principal components and their works have been widely republished. Among them also one of the most controversial adherents to the first Vienna circle: Otto Neurath (1882-1945) . Once stigmatized as a volcanic revolutionary, poor in theory as rich in reforming enthusiasm, Neurath has been rediscovered as an astonishingly modern theorist of the philosophy of science, capable of anticipating the much later positions of Kuhn and Feyerabend. Neurath’s role as an economist, though, has been much more neglected, even if recently his economic writings have been republished and partially translated in English . A quite astonishing occurrence, given that Neurath begun his scientific and academic career as an economist with an outstanding curriculum and participated in all debates of his time, discussing in depth central themes from the theory of value, to th...

Trade, as defined by ware flows, constrained Lombardy to an enriching agricultural specialization throughout the nineteenth century. Growing exports of silk, cheese and wheat guaranteed a profit rate not comparable with manufacturing activities, attracting capital and entrepreneurial capabilities. Reversing this economic trend needed active state intervention, entrepreneurial migrations and supportive merchant networks. Entrepreneurial migrations followed the lure of government protection through trade routes set up by merchants. Specialised capabilities and entrepreneurial spirit were so brought to Lombardy were they could successfully exploit local opportunities in emerging sectors as cotton printing, silk intermediation and insurances. To guarantee the long time profitability of their ventures foreign entrepreneurs actively supported and financed technical schooling and the formation ofspecialised human capital. They also directed the institutionalisation of the Chamber of Commer...

As of a consequence of the ongoing economic crisis, in 2010 there was a marked deterioration in cross-border relations between Italy and Germany. In both countries the press published articles openly blaming economic hardship on the squandering attitude of southerners or the egoistic and mercantilist policies of northerners. The reigning confusion among economists, split between pro-and anti-Euro positions in both countries, could do nothing to counter this growing wave of populist nationalism. Out of this situation grew the idea of a organizing a conference to discuss the theoretical issues implied by recent economic policy debates, purging them of ideological and nationalistic overtones. This volume publishes the proceedings of the resulting international colloquium, «Economic crisis and new nationalisms: German economic policy as perceived by European partners», which was organized by the Foundation Cesifin Alberto Predieri and held in Florence in November 2012

I saggi del volume, ordinati cronologicamente, rendono il cammino dell’economia toscana visibile e riconoscibile anche ad un occhio profano o più attento alle bellezze artistiche che alle realtà produttive. Non si poteva non iniziare questo viaggio appassionante da quel Bettino Ricasoli che, pur artefice dell’unità italiana, pur presidente del Consiglio dei ministri, per ben due volte, fu anche e soprattutto imprenditore tra le terre senesi e la maremma. Sua la ricetta di quel Chianti che, oggi, è uno dei marchi più riconoscibili della Toscana. Ben rappresenta, il barone Ricasoli, la secolare imprenditorialità agricola toscana, spesso aristocratica ma anche mezzadrile, cui dobbiamo il paesaggio toscano qual è oggi, con poggi coperti di vigne ed ulivi e piane ricche di colture intensive. Un paesaggio che non solo produce ricchezza con i suoi prodotti, ma è divenuto per sé origine di reddito grazie alla sua bellezza, capace di affascinare cineasti, musicisti e poeti ed attrarre inesaurite schiere di turisti.
Altra imprenditorialità fu quella degli artigiani e manifattori ottocenteschi, legati a produzioni di alta qualità artistica, raramente meccanizzabili. Poca cosa, certo, rispetto alle meraviglie che l’Inghilterra sfoggiava alle esposizioni universali; un saper fare, tuttavia che ancora oggi forma un sostrato artigianale diffuso che da un lato caratterizza percorsi turistici suoi propri, dall’altra ha creato, in taluni casi, eccellenze produttive mondiali nei settori della moda, delle calzature, della ceramica e dell’oreficeria.
I moderati toscani, alla guida della regione per tutto il lungo ottocento, erano paghi di questo modello di sviluppo, tutto agricolo e artigianale, che ritenevano non solo economicamente apprezzabile, ma equo, fonte di ricchezza ed allo stesso tempo pace sociale. Era, naturalmente, un’illusione. Lo spettro che si aggirava per l’Europa non si sarebbe fermato alle porte della Toscana. Già l’unità d’Italia dette uno scossone alla placida e arcadica Toscanina. Uno scrollone, definitivo, le venne poi dal diventare, se pur per poco, sede della capitale d’Italia: Firenze. L’imprenditorialità locale uscì da questi rivolgimenti profondamente mutata. Più aperta alle suggestioni estere, più attenta ai mercati ed alla tecnologia, ma anche più consapevole della necessità di proteggersi. L’industrializzazione toscana, coeva della nascita dello stato italiano non poté non esplicitarsi in un rapporto stretto tra imprenditori e politica. Molta della grande industria della regione, nata dalla seconda rivoluzione industriale, deve la sua esistenza e il suo assetto all’intervento dello stato nell’economia. Un rapporto simbiotico che è cessato solo con le privatizzazioni e gli anni ’90 del novecento. Non è ozioso chiedersi quanta parte abbia avuto questa ritirata dello stato nel presente processo di deindustrializzazione.
La Toscana, però, oltre alla grande impresa, spesso statale, deve il suo sviluppo industriale anche a capacità organizzative e conoscenze diffuse che hanno avuto nei distretti degli anni’50 e ‘60 la loro epifania. Lana, pelleteria, oreficieria, carta e persino il vivaismo sono prodotti felici di una miriade di aziende nate dalle capacità manuali e dalle attitudini imprenditoriali degli eredi dei mezzadri, operai e artigiani ottocenteschi. Una ricchezza particolarmente resiliente in tempi di crisi. Certo, i distretti toscani sono cambiati, nelle comunità etniche che li controllano, nel numero delle aziende leader, persino nei segmenti di prodotto cui si dedicano. Ciò nonostante, hanno lasciato alla Toscana del nuovo millennio un base industriale vivace e reattiva che si esplicita in medie imprese concorrenziali a livello mondiale e vocazione imprenditoriale diffusa.

Conference Proceedings Essays by Francesca Chiesi Ermotti  Dittmar Dahlmann  John R. Davis  Klaus Heller  Katharina Middel  Matthias Middell  Monika Poettinger  Maximiliane Rieder  Ezio Ritrovato  Wolfgang Sartor  Margrit Schulte Beerbühl

Storici del pensiero economico, storici economici ed economisti - tra i quali alcuni allievi di Federico Caffè - , dedicano un volume di studi alla ricostruzione della proposta scientifica di uno dei Maestri della disciplina che più ha avuto a cuore il progresso dell'Italia.

It might seem strange and perhaps of dubious results to compare, on the same argument, two economists with kinship ties like father and son. Contaminations, cross-references, influences of all kind would have to be taken for granted, so that every resulting judgment would be blurred and indefinite, perhaps even insignificant. Little cases are known, fewer even have been studied. The relationship father to son remains so the domain of physiologists and dramaturges more than the realm of historians of economic thought.
The chosen argument of this paper, though, might make such a historiographical hazard more fruitful. Economic crises, their definition and perception, changed greatly during the lifetime of Wilhelm (1840-1901) and Otto Neurath (1882-1945), spanning from mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. The evolution in the thought of the two economists can so be related, as done in the following, with the changing of economic conditions and the ever growing relevance of crises in the political and social scene. The selected economists, the more, had always a particular attention for economic crises in their thought. Crises, affirmed the successor to the learning post of the father, “can be considered Neurath’s own and particular field of research”  , while the son’s major achievement, in the eyes of contemporaries, was his theorizing on war economics, which studied wars as a particular kind of crisis.
The thought of the two economists, then, can testimony the loss of innocence of economic thought between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Liberalism was increasingly criticized, while Marxian heritage prophesized an inevitable Götterdämmerung. In this scenario, Neuraths proposed a complete upturn of the contemporary economic system, without doing away with bourgeois institutions like private property. Their contribution to the thought on crises was their historicist analysis of economic institutions and their refusal to accept any kind of law of nature or natural system concerning human economic action. In search of a solution for the recurrent economic crises, both father and son drew economics out of its sought of isolation, relating it to other social sciences. Along the same lines, they both analysed with attention the philosophical foundations of economic research, contributing to the methodological debate of their time.

This paper identifies some traits that characterised the history of the porcelain manufacture of Doccia when it was a possession of the Ginori family, from the foundation to the fusion with the "Società Ceramica Richard” in 1896. The origin itself of the manufacture was unusual: not mercantile but mercantilist, not only entrepreneurial but also administrative. Such peculiarities descended and depended from the founder himself: Carlo Ginori, a passionate alchemist and an illuminist at core who united entrepreneurial vision and market knowledge with a great capacity to administer and govern territories and properties.
From this origin, the manufactory derived four characteristics that persisted through its long life under the control of the Ginori family. Firstly, being a personal possession of the family and never a corporation with its own personality, the factory was managed by “ministers”. This occurrence confronted the property, ahead of its time, with all agency problems typical of modern corporations with separated ownership and control. Sometimes, as in the case of Johannon de Saint Laurent, Jacopo Fanciullacci and Paolo Lorenzini, the relationship run smoothly, in other cases it created fractures and strategic incapacity. Secondly, Doccia was immediately created as a centralized production facility and for all its life it made no concession to homeworking and decentralisation. In such a context, again ahead of times, to authoritarian excesses on the side of the property corresponded early collective claims from the workforce: an exercise for future industrial relations. A third point regards accounting methods. Accounting was a meticulous presence inside the manufacture, but did not correspond in any way to the usual merchant one. Considering unsold stocks as present values, the manufactory at times managed inventories with presumed values higher than that of the entire production facility, while active sale strategies were adopted only at the end of the eighteenth century. The family was appeased by a constant influx of income from its various activities and would not pursue growth per se. Accounting, in this sense, was more an instrument of control over administrators than the base for strategic reasoning. The modernization of bookkeeping was introduced just in the first half of the nineteenth century. Last characteristic that Doccia derived from its peculiar foundation was the inheritance problem. Fighting among heirs, heirs still not of age, trustees with little decision power were common traits of each generational transit. All these problems increased the decision power of administrators, exacerbating agency conflicts.
With this complex heredity, the porcelain manufacture of Doccia crossed the centuries of industrialization, from the alchemical crucible to mass consumption, bearing witness of the social and cultural changes entailed in economic modernization. Often ahead of times, the Ginori manufacture experienced social conflicts, paternalism, the passage from entrepreneurship to a managed enterprise, bureaucratization and the relationship with the surrounding territory. It did so with a success that should not only be measured in terms of profits or generated income flows, but also from a social and cultural point of view. In time, as count Fossombroni wrote in his report on the manufacture, written in 1780, the manufactory came to represent an art gallery, for the beauty of its products, a social establishment for the employment it generated, a succesfull trade, given its sales and exports, and a stimulus for all landed proprietors to dedicate their capital and talent to industrial pursuits. A call for successful aristocratic entrepreneurship.

Il paper inquadra il pensiero di Amartya Sen all'interno della millenaria evoluzione del concetto di povertà dalle economie palatine al liberalismo ottocentesco. L'idea dell'economista indiano ne emerge dotata di straordinaria capacità di sintesi tra l'approccio statalista della giustizia economica e l'opposto individualismo efficentista.

Nel presente saggio si intende porre al centro dell’analisi storica come gli imprenditori toscani abbiano reagito all’improvviso cambiamento di orizzonte seguito all’arrivo della capitale. E’ indubbio, infatti, che l’unificazione nazionale prima e il trasferimento della capitale poi abbiano influito in maniera determinante sulle scelte strategiche di chi guidava le aziende toscane, cambiando la percezione dei rischi, ampliando la domanda di riferimento e quindi l’economicità di aggiornamenti tecnologici ed innovazione, offrendo in contesti istituzionali mutati diverse opportunità imprenditoriali. Non solo il mercato di riferimento passava dalla Toscanina, quella magistralmente descritta da Carlo Collodi, all’Italia tutta, ma Firenze Capitale ne diventava il centro finanziario, attirandovi la sede delle principali  società per azioni di interesse pubblico e non.
Muta, dunque, in profondità il quadro imprenditoriale fiorentino e, nella prima parte del saggio (paragrafi 1 e 2), si intende compiere un’analisi comparativa sulla consistenza produttiva dell’economia fiorentina e toscana in generale. La storiografia, infatti, ci restituisce un quadro manifatturiero e produttivo generalmente incentrato su alcuni stabilimenti di punta, mentre uno spoglio dell’elenco delle Società anonime ed accomandite per azioni con sede in Firenze restituisce un quadro molto più complesso e variegato, quadro, tra l’altro, in vorticosa espansione per gli anni della Capitale e poi in rapido sgonfiamento fino alla crisi finanziaria del Comune. Anche i dati sulla forza motrice, sia essa di origine idraulica che a vapore, riuniti in una statistica di fine secolo per la provincia di Firenze, indicano una situazione ben più articolata. Sarà di primario interesse, quindi, cercare di valutare quanto questo complesso sistema manifatturiero subisca gli effetti dell’improvviso allargamento del mercato e dello spostamento dei capitali verso gli impieghi diventati più vantaggiosi.
Nella seconda parte del saggio (paragrafo 3) si proverà ad effettuare un’analisi qualitativa di questi cambiamenti, rilevando tracce dirette dei mutamenti che l’arrivo della Capitale portò nelle strategie aziendali, nelle reti di riferimento, nelle affiliazioni politiche e nei rapporti internazionali delle più importanti aziende fiorentine. Un’accresciuta importanza dell’elemento finanziario, l’aumento delle commesse pubbliche, l’espansione dei mercati di approvvigionamento e vendita, il cambiamento della forma societaria con la creazione di una società per azioni, saranno, in questo senso, tutti segnali di un rapido cambiamento dovuto, più che ad un autonomo sentiero di crescita dell’impresa, ad un favorevole shock esterno. Il saggio, in sintesi, si articolerà lungo queste due direttrici, ricostruendo le turbolenze, indotte dagli eventi seguiti all’Unità d’Italia e culminati negli anni della Capitale secondo un’analisi più propriamente statistica e di sintesi generale prima, da un punto di vista di storia d’impresa poi.

What emerges from a preliminary survey of Italian literature of the nineteenth century is mostly a vague perception of the momentous change from a traditional society largely based on agriculture to a society centered in cities and divided in new classes. How much the latter depended on the economic cycle was a question posed and answered even at the end of the century only in economic journals and academic writings, but not in literature at large. The life of the common man was still much more influenced by famine than economic turmoil. A closer scrutiny of the main periodicals of the nineteenth century, till Italy’s unification, though, with the aid of the taxonomy proposed by gerolamo Boccardo and Francesco Ferrara, permits a more precise appraisal of how and if, in Italy, economic crises were perceived by intellectuals and even common men. In Italy the most recurrent form of crisis for the whole century remained famine and as such was widely discussed and represented in literature as in journals (paragraph 1). The idea of overproduction crises, instead, almost unknown as a contemporary reality, came to coincide in the imagination of Italians with the idea of England itself, a nation rich and powerful as any, but plagued by a diffused misery, unknown in such measure on the Continent (paragraph 2). Some conclusions will be drawn from this study, hinting at how the repeated financial and economic crises at the end of the century spread among intellectuals and in popular periodicals the idea of economic determinism (paragraph 3). After a century of struggles for political independence and unification, Italians learnt that they still had to pay for it.

The Viennese Otto Neurath (1882-1945) , once stigmatized as a volcanic revolutionary, poor in theory as rich in reforming enthusiasm, has only recently been rediscovered as an economist and his economic writings have been republished and partially translated in English . This paper analyzes the early years of Otto Neurath’s scientific activity, at the beginning of the twentieth century, when particular attention was given by him to war economics.
Otto Neurath excluded any kind of ethical prejudice from restricting economic analysis. Acquiring methods as war and smuggling should, in his view, be studied exactly as market exchange and production. “That pillage – he wrote – is prohibited by law, should not impede economists from studying it. Why should the consequences of trade and domestic manufacture be worth to be analyzed, while the effects of smuggling are ignored? In consequence of such considerations war has been vastly ignored by economists as a form of acquisition (…)”  .
Far away from any interventionist stance, Neurath considered the Balkan wars and WWI as an extraordinary occasion to gather information  about the emerging of barter trade, even at international level , the centralized administration of production, the controlled distribution of consumption goods and the destabilizing or even vanishing of financial systems. His extraordinary efforts in this field were recognized not only with a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an official commendation from the Austrian government, but also with the appointment as director of the Museum of War Economy in Leipzig in 1916 .
Above all, studying a war economy in its development meant, for Neurath, the possibility to demonstrate that a certain grade of administrative control over the economy, based on a general system of in-kind calculations, could prevent what he considered the worst trait of market economies: economic crises. An isotype in particular, of his volume of 1939, bears testimony of such stance. The image illustrates a statistic on coal production in the United States between 1914 and 1936, underlining how in 1917, a year of war, production steadily remained on its maximum capacity, showing no sign of seasonal or cyclical fluctuation.
As early as 1913, in his essay: Probleme der Kriegswirtschaftslehre , Neurath went a step further: “The present underemployment of existing forces, that is typical of our Ordnung, incites to war: it is necessary, for example, to defend oneself from foreign wares and foreign laborers or oblige others to buy our wares or accept our workers, and all of this because it is not spontaneous to enter in cooperative relations between states; furthermore it is easy to alleviate the costs of war thanks to reparations; and lastly because at times war frees productive forces that would otherwise be bound. The uneconomic construction of our Lebensordnung is the cause why at present war causes lesser evils than in a more economical Lebensordnung the case would be”  .
To eradicate war, in Neurath’s view, mankind had only two alternatives. The first would have been to render it uneconomical. A second opportunity to foster peace, obviously, would have been to abandon the present inefficient Lebensordnung for a more effective one. To decide, though, which Lebensordnung to implement in reality was not the task of an economist. Neurath continued so, instead, to offer to the attention of politicians economic organizational alternatives to market economy, all the while steadily collecting statistical data and transforming it in easily understandable isotypes, in order to enable the largest possible strata of population to decide about their future.

A lungo conservato presso l’Archivio del Senato della Repubblica e mai pubblicato prima d’ora, il testo rappresenta allo stesso tempo la summa del pensiero storico di Fanfani e il suo testamento politico.
La pubblicazione, che riassume in sé un decennio di studi, si concentra su temi come le innovazioni tecnologiche della terza rivoluzione industriale, i loro effetti sull’occupazione e sulle strutture economiche e sociali, il rapporto tra la mutata struttura economica e le istituzioni, i cambiamenti nelle relazioni internazionali causati dai diversi gradi di sviluppo.
“Di fronte ad un uomo che ha perso il controllo del suo agire economico”, spiega la curatrice, “quello di Fanfani è un grido di ribellione che risuona per tutto il secolo breve. Con l’enfasi del predicatore di un nuovo umanesimo, lo statista richiama l’uomo ad esercitare la sua volontà nell’indirizzare le proprie azioni e a riappropriarsi della responsabilità del progresso economico di tutta l’umanità”.

Federico Caffè dedicò la sua vita di studioso alla diffusione, in accademia, tra i decisori economici del big business, big labour e big government , fino ai lettori di quotidiani e riviste indipendenti, di quei modelli possibili che emergevano da una lettura matura e variegata del passato storico italiano, dallo studio attento e non viziato di pregiudizio delle teorie di politica economica più recenti, fossero di eredità keynesiana o dedicate al welfare economics, ed infine dalla riscoperta di idealità passate e sconfitte, come la centralità del lavoro nella vita sociale.
Di seguito si analizzerà proprio questo sforzo diffusivo dell’economista abruzzese, troppo facilmente e semplicemente riconducibile a quella “tradizione italiana dei grandi Maestri del passato che, a cominciare da Francesco Ferrara, non hanno mai circoscritto il loro impegno alla ricerca teorica e all’insegnamento, ma hanno svolto un’attiva opera divulgativa e polemica nella pubblicistica e si sono posti a disposizione del Paese, quando il loro consiglio è stato richiesto nell’interesse generale”  . Approfondendo, infatti, lo studio delle pubblicazioni di Federico Caffè, oltre il mero sforzo pubblicistico o la volontà di consigliare i cittadini, se ne intende ricostruire le fondamenta epistemologiche, metodologiche e teoriche del pensiero.

As of a consequence of the ongoing economic crisis, in 2010 there was a marked deterioration in cross-border relations between Italy and
Germany. In both countries the press published articles openly blaming economic hardship on the squandering attitude of southerners or the
egoistic and mercantilist policies of northerners. The reigning confusion among economists, split between pro-and anti-Euro positions in both
countries, could do nothing to counter this growing wave of populist nationalism.
Out of this situation grew the idea of a organizing a conference to discuss the theoretical issues implied by recent economic policy debates, purging them of ideological and nationalistic overtones. This volume publishes the proceedings of the resulting international colloquium, «Economic crisis and new nationalisms: German economic policy as perceived by European partners», which was organized by the Foundation Cesifin Alberto Predieri and held in Florence in November 2012.

The 1980s witnessed a renewed interest in the Wiener Kreis and logical empiricism . New historiographical accounts were dedicated to its principal components and their works have been widely republished. Among them also one of the most controversial adherents to the first Vienna circle: Otto Neurath (1882-1945) . Once stigmatized as a volcanic revolutionary, poor in theory as rich in reforming enthusiasm, Neurath has been rediscovered as an astonishingly modern theorist of the philosophy of science, capable of anticipating the much later positions of Kuhn and Feyerabend.
Neurath’s role as an economist, though, has been much more neglected, even if recently his economic writings have been republished and partially translated in English . A quite astonishing occurrence, given that Neurath begun his scientific and academic career as an economist with an outstanding curriculum and participated in all debates of his time, discussing in depth central themes from the theory of value, to the method of social sciences, from the normative content of economics to the possibility of socialist calculation, to quote just the most renown. Due to the vehemence of these debates, contemporaries judged Neurath’s accomplishments rather with contempt than appreciation. Nonetheless the silence of historiography for most of the remaining twentieth century is not easily understandable, particularly in the field of economic thought.
The main difficulty in evaluating Neurath’s economic theory lies in his radical redefinition of the economic science as such, based on his empiricist, or better even ‘physicalist’, approach. The first section of this paper will so be dedicated to briefly introduce Neurath’s idea of science and of the role scientists should have in society. How his epistemology resulted from of his experience in reforming economic science in the first decades of the twentieth century will also be briefly illustrated.
The second section of the paper will then relate how Neurath, in the course of the years comprised between the publication of his doctoral dissertation in 1906 and his essay on Das Begriffsgebäude der Wirtschaftslehre und seine Grundlagen  in 1917, completely revolutionized the idea of economics, refuting both the approach of the historical school represented by Gustav Schmoller, one of his supervisors in Berlin, and the sistematic of the school of Vienna he already attacked participating to the seminar held by Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk in 1906.
Neurath so redefined economics in an holistic effort to reduce to unity all the opposing positions inflaming the economic debates of those troubled years, giving life to a science that could equally make space for abstracting models and empirical verification; a science that applied the same methodology to the study of a market economy and of socialization processes; a science that could comprise List’s cosmopolitan economy as a contemporary war economy.
Although being quite revolutionary in its outcome, Neurath’s definition of economics rested heavily on the past of the discipline. In his view, no science could and should be rebuild completely, starting with a tabula rasa. From Aristotle to Smith, from Quesnay to Sismondi, all economists had still something useful to contribute to the advancement of science. What once had been cast away could find new validity in some novel form or in a restricted field. History was so an indispensable part of the economist’s toolkit.
As described in the paper, many features of Neurath’s economics reveal today a striking modernity, justifying the necessity of a new and more complete evaluation of his role in the history of economic thought.

Il volume, curato da Monika Poettinger, docente di Storia Economica alla Bocconi di Milano e collaboratrice con la cattedra di Storia del pensiero Economico all’Università di Firenze, affronta i flussi migratori imprenditoriali tedeschi che, nella seconda metà del XVIII secolo, seguivano le rotte delle merci. A manovrarne i fili, colonie di mercanti tedeschi emigrati, forti della conoscenza delle imprenditorialità locali e con basi in grandi e importanti centri di commercio, come ad esempio Lipsia, San Pietroburgo e le nostre Venezia e Trieste. A loro si deve la fondazione di molte manifatture, ma anche di banche e assicurazioni. Quando le reti attecchirono localmente, influenzarono le élite fino a rendere l’innovazione un tratto caratteristico dello sviluppo economico di una regione, favoren-done l’industrializzazione.
La pubblicazione è suddivisa in quattro sezioni. I saggi presenti nella prima fanno luce sulle origini delle reti mercantili tedesche che risalgono addirittura al XVII secolo. Le successive tre sezioni si concentrano sul panorama delle reti e delle migrazioni imprenditoriali tedesche in Gran Bretagna, Russia e Italia. I testi sono per la maggior parte in inglese e tedesco, l’unico in italiano delinea l’esperienza del casato mercantile dei Pedrazzini di Campo Vallemaggia (nell’attuale Svizzera italiana), mercanti a Kassel, in Germania, nel Settecento.

SAGGI DI
Francesca Chiesi Ermotti  Dittmar Dahlmann  John R. Davis  Klaus Heller  Katharina Middel  Matthias Middell  Monika Poettinger  Maximiliane Rieder  Ezio Ritrovato  Wolfgang Sartor  Margrit Schulte Beerbühl

Il volume analizza la figura del mercante partendo dalle civiltà mesopotamiche fino ad arrivare a metà Ottocento. Considerato un eroe capace di straordinarie imprese commerciali per il bene della collettività, nel Rinascimento si “traveste” da Mago che dona ricchezze alle città per ottenere il riconoscimento della società e delle più alte cariche governanti. Un balzo di qualche secolo e si arriva in piena epoca industrializzata: si definisce un’idea di mercante gretto, meschino e senza scrupoli, capace di tutto pur di raggiungere il proprio tornaconto. Chiude il volume un capitolo dedicato alla Milano ottocentesca e alla sua fiorente economia mercantile. Una volta unificata l’Italia, l’unica regione veramente industrializzata era la Lombardia e soprattutto il suo capoluogo, Milano: proprio qui nascono le prime associazioni e la prima Camera di Commercio.
Durante l’arco temporale preso in considerazione emerge chiaramente la dicotomia tra l’interesse privato, spesso mal celato, del mercante che viene  stigmatizzato come esempio di bassa moralità per l’incessante attività alla ricerca del profitto personale, e la nobiltà d’animo unita al disinteresse verso il proprio guadagno a fronte di un benessere più generale, ritenuto necessario per governare.

Il volume, in lingua tedesca, è suddiviso in quattro parti e copre circa cento anni di storia, dal XVIII al XIX secolo, durante i quali Milano è stata oggetto di migrazioni imprenditoriali e flussi commerciali che la legavano all’Europa grazie alla ricca produzione agricola. Da differenti stati tedeschi si giungeva a Milano per partecipare al commercio della seta, lavorare il cotone, importare le conoscenze del manufatto dall’Inghilterra, produrre e commercializzare prodotti in pelle. Si sono quindi venute a creare quelle reti commerciali che avrebbero dominato l’élite lombarda ed europea fino alla fine dell’Ottocento. La migrazione di operatori e tecnici tedeschi è cresciuta dalla metà del XIX secolo in poi. A poco a poco l’intera struttura economica della Lombardia è stata trasformata e si è visto un cambiamento anche nella migrazione per esigenze lavorative: i concessionari sono stati sostituiti dai rappresentanti e i tecnici dagli ingegneri. È emersa quindi una rete di aziende altamente specializzate nella produzione di gomma, plastica e beni di consumo. Grazie agli imprenditori tedeschi si è sviluppata la cultura per il lavoro e la fede nel progresso tecnologico, basi per lo sviluppo economico.

The outcome of the Franco-Prussian war and the unification of Germany irreversibly altered Europe’s political equilibrium and with it the ideological predominance of French culture on the Continent. This was particularly true for the young economic science, the most brilliant outcome of enlightenment. It had been political economy, with its natural laws, to justify the revolutionary claim to individual freedom, foundation of wealth and welfare. The predominance of this economic liberalism had had its culmination in 1860 with the Cobden Chevalier Treaty, sanctioning not only the commitment of Great Britain and France to free trade but also the proximity of their traditions in economic thought. The emergence, though, in the subsequent decade of new national bodies in Italy and Germany brought to the forefront the necessity to justify institutional changes and profound reforms in law and polities, a feat done summoning the historical evolution of societies more than endorsing individual freedom. The existence of immutable laws of nature in the economic sphere, grounded in individualism, could not suit the Italian and German endeavour of state building as the national conscience of the new born states could not be fed with theories of foreign ascendancy. In both nations the necessity was felt to develop an economic thinking prone to state intervention and diversified from Anglo-French tradition. Eisenach was the German answer, Milan the Italian one. Both congresses, held in 1872 and 1875 respectively, harshly condemned the inhuman working conditions, for women and children, entailed in the industrialization process and consequently invoked the intervention of the State in the name of moral principles. Contingency was so the excuse of pervading policies that could be adapted to different situations in space and time. Prussia’s military predominance lent force to these theoretical arguments as ideology followed political power. Liberalists could not accept such turn in economic science. Across borders, alarmed reviews of the two Congresses were printed, translated and commented, journals were even founded with the intent to refute or diffuse the new theories. The ensuing Methodenstreit became a powerful means to diffuse economic thinking in the whole of Europe, stimulating international reviewing of economic books and articles and the translation of economic texts.

"Up to the nineteenth century, merchants extended networks of subsidiaries, correspondents and
investments world-wide, becoming a major trigger of innovation and economic development. To
guarantee the functioning of their international merchant houses, they had to adhere to a strict moral
code. The resulting “moral communities” diffused everywhere the “freedom of merchants”: work to
fulfil oneself and obtain economic independence, wealth as a mean to social recognition.
As the Ancien Régime neared its end, merchants were ready to economically and morally guide
society into a new era. Many called into question the noblesse Commerçante, though, and
philosophers and economists ridiculed merchant virtues, representing merchants as men bent only
on profit and self-interest. The industrialist, so, became the bourgeoisie´s myth and merchant ethics
vanished from the agenda of historians and economists alike. Industrialization thusly lost one of its
main characters and economics missed a catalyst of innovation and social capital formation. "

Dal fermento intellettuale della Vienna di inizio secolo, dalla lezione epistemologica di Ernst Mach, dal tramonto del positivismo nasce l’esperienza umana e scientifica di Otto Neurath, figura dominante del primo circolo viennese. Non a caso definito, poi, il Nietzsche del circolo di Vienna, Neurath fu un intellettuale che seppe però andare molto al di là delle posizioni pur già ritenute rivoluzionarie dei suoi contemporanei, fino ad anticipare Kuhn e Feyerabend.
Di Neurath, in questo scritto, si vuole ricostruire il legame tra storia ed economia, esaminando, quindi, sia la sua definizione, profondamente storicista, di scienza e di economia come scienza, sia i suoi contributi per lo più giovanili alla storia economica ed alla storia del pensiero economico. Da questi scritti emerge come
proprio il legame tra storia ed economia politica, per Neurath,  rivestisse un’importanza fondamentale nel costituire la base della moderna sociologia, sociologia che era e doveva essere anche sociologia della scienza, cioè strumento esplicativo dell’evolversi di ogni disciplina, economia inclusa.
Oltre a definire nel pensiero di Neurath il rapporto tra storia ed economia è indispensabile confrontare le sue conclusioni con la lezione di maestri come Weber e Schmoller, ma anche con chi, a partire dalle stesse problematiche epistemologiche e dalla sua stessa formazione giunse ad una definizione di economia e
storia del pensiero economico completamente differenti: Joseph A. Schumpeter. In questo modo l’analisi di Otto Neurath avrà modo di apparire in tutta la sua radicale originalità e modernità.

In Italy, at the time of Unification, the perception that economic matters would be decisive to achieve political purposes as well as to gain individual freedom was widespread among ruling classes and intellectual elites. From the revolution of ‘48, went the common wisdom, the battle to be fought was no more for political freedom but for economic liberalism. On this issue all parties had to take stance and win the public opinion. They did so indulging in extensive propaganda through associations and journals. Political economy became a fashionable science, the object of diffused study and a widely taught discipline. The main debated question, in Parliament as on newspapers, was the role the newborn state in the economy. Every policy issue, from the regulation of the financial market to the printing of money, from the renovation of trade agreements to the redemption of railway lines was analyzed in view of this fundamental question: had the state the right to intervene in economic matters?
«‘La liberté est la règle, l´intervention de l´État ne peut être acceptée qu´à titre d´exception, réclamée par une nécessité inexorable’. Voilà leur principe, et le nôtre en même temps. Seulement , selon nous, les cas exceptionnels sont infiniment rares, et très-souvent, contestables, tandis qu´aux yeux de nos honorables confrères ils sont assez nombreux pour étouffer la règle» wrote Francesco Ferrara to his friends of the Société d´économie politique in 1875 about the Methodenstreit that opposed him to Luigi Luzzatti.
The paper will reconstruct the complex cultural process that brought about the victory of state interventionists in this ideological battle fought through political economy disputes, shaping the institutional form of the newborn Italian state. Individual freedom, as for Luigi Luzzatti, was thusly no more to be found in economic liberalism but in the Constitution. The Italian “statocrazia” was born.

In this paper I will highlight some questions arising from the application of the categories of entrepreneur and enterprise to ancient economic history, particularly the Near Eastern one. No corresponding definitions are to be found in contemporary sources, so the question arises if it is correct to over impose such definitions on individuals and institutions at a time when they would have been devoid of meaning. In particular, it seems, recent historiography on ancient Near East economies uses the terms entrepreneur and enterprise, concerning mostly the activity of merchants or former functionaries, to define private economic initiative and private property of productive means. This interpretation tends to artificially create a divide between a public and a private sector, with the aim of reconstructing the slow emergence of a market, efficient and growth bearing, in between the loosening fabric of the palace economy. The newborn market economy, fleeing the excessive bureaucracy of Eastern Empires, is then reported to gradually expand toward the West bringing civilization in its wake.
Such positivistic historiographical attitude is underscored by modern economic theory, preaching an idealistic view of economic interactions dominated by natural laws. Even if for historians positivism is hardly an issue anymore, economists still see the long millennia of human development as the struggle of free market institutions to prevail over less efficient ones. Even many economic historians subscribe to such implicit view, seeking over time and space the signs of this battle for economic progress. As with nineteenth century positivism, such economic positivism may also have a slight evolutionary coloring: the more averse to free market interplay a political construction or a social institution, the easier to impute its decadence to its evoked economic inefficiency. Market economy is de facto considered the best just because it emerged, last, from a process of natural selection.
This holy quest for the market’s springs bears the risk not only of being sterile, but also of distorting historical research, imposing a view of past economic interactions in terms of today’s, causing more than one misinterpretation. Back to entrepreneurship this means, for example, exaggerating the competition between the private and the public sector of Near East’s ancient economies losing sight of their real functioning. It means also using the term entrepreneur inappropriately and reductively in respect to its real historical value born out of Enlightenment and industrialization.
It still might be fruitful to use recent theories and concepts regarding modern enterprises and entrepreneurs in studying ancient Near Eastern economies, bearing in mind though the profound differences that even similar institutions or actions when pertaining to periods divided by millennia would entail in terms of implicit rationality of the decision process and of chosen ends to individual and social action.

In the last decades of the eighteenth century cotton, then a fashionable production, was subsidized by the Austrian as the French government in their respective rule over Lombardy. Through various forms of state help, foreign capital and skills were attracted to Lombardy and many manufactures founded.
Mule Jennies and roller printer made their apparition in the first factories of Milan. Governments were appeased, but the much desired cotton sector never really developed above the minimum size necessary to render mechanization profitable. Only the specialized printing activity of
Gio. Adamo Kramer could sustain the price of modernization.
What legacy did this fashionable cotton production leave at the eve of Restoration?
Milan´s first cotton manufactures served to insert the city in the Europe wide circulation of human and entrepreneurial capital necessary to trigger the subsequent industrialization of the region.

Analizzare gli scambi, per un economista, vuol dire soprattutto quantificare e qualificare i flussi di beni tra paesi, valutandone le conseguenze in termini di specializzazione produttiva. Economicamente, l’effetto principale del commercio internazionale è così la divisione internazionale del lavoro, determinata dai vantaggi competitivi in termini di risorse o costo dei fattori produttivi. Ogni paese, insomma, finisce per fare ciò che sa fare meglio, con le sue risorse più abbondanti ed a buon mercato, aumentando l’efficienza dell’economia a livello globale.
In questo quadro analitico i flussi di merci e di persone sono in alternativa l’uno all’altro. Si muovono le merci quando ciò costa meno che spostare i fattori produttivi. Le migrazioni imprenditoriali, spesso accompagnate da conoscenze specializzate, prezioso capitale umano, sono così da far risalire alla presenza di protezioni tariffarie tanto alte, o risorse tanto abbondanti, dal rendere più economico spostare la produzione nel paese nel quale vi è il mercato di sbocco protetto o il mercato di approvvigionamento più conveniente, piuttosto che continuare a produrre nel paese di origine creando rapporti commerciali.
Questa la teoria ricardiana del commercio internazionale: la dimostrazione che la divisione del lavoro e la specializzazione produttiva portano vantaggi a tutti quanti si impegnino nel commercio, che siano individui o stati; la ratio insomma per auspicare il diffondersi dell’economia di scambio e quindi del mercato per aumentare efficienza e benessere. Nell’Ottocento, tuttavia, quando questa teoria si diffuse, era ben chiaro a storici ed economisti che la trionfale marcia del mercato non corrispondeva unicamente all’espandersi della divisione del lavoro. La specializzazione individuale e internazionale della produzione implicava l’associazione delle forze produttive. Economia e società, dunque, come due facce della stessa medaglia. I commerci e gli scambi portavano rapporti sociali sempre più stretti e complessi: al mutare degli uni corrispondeva sempre il mutare degli altri.
Quando si analizzano storicamente i rapporti commerciali tra due paesi o tra due città, pur così rarefatti come quelli tra la Moscovia e Firenze nel Rinascimento, non è possibile dunque limitarsi ad una quantificazione e qualificazione delle merci scambiate. Ingenuo constatare appena che conveniva importare dal nord-est europeo pellicce perché la loro relativa abbondanza le rendeva là così convenienti, mentre la loro rarità in Italia, esotiche e preziose. Ingenuo registrare semplicemente che alle zimarre alla turca, agli zibellini a mano con estremità rivestite di lamine d’oro e ornate di pietre preziose, alle sopravvesti da uomo foderate di pelle di lupo cerviero e di lince testimoniati a Firenze dall’iconografia pittorica cinquecentesca e di ovvia origine russa, corrisposero alla corte di Mosca velluti, lampassi damaschi e moscatelli prodotti a Firenze e Prato con una artigianalità unica ed una ricchezza di ricami d’oro e argento dedicata esclusivamente a quel tipo di mercato ed alla sua domanda.
In realtà questi rapporti commerciali; e gli scambi in generale, non sono mai solo di merci, ma anche di culture. In primo luogo perché le merci stesse hanno in sé un valore culturale. Un oggetto non è unicamente il frutto di un processo produttivo, manuale o meccanico che sia, ma lo rappresenta, nel suo essere artistico, artigianale, standardizzato ed in quanto tale è simbolo di una ben precisa tipologia e cultura produttiva. Non solo. Una merce rappresenta anche un processo di consumo e così i gusti, le esigenze e la rappresentazione di sé di chi nel processo di scambio lo acquista. Quando lo scambio diventa internazionale e lega luoghi lontani come Firenze e la Moscovia, non vi saranno allora solo conseguenze meramente economiche, il guadagno di efficienza, insomma. Vi saranno anche conseguenze sociali e culturali la cui portata solo negli ultimi anni è diventata oggetto degli studi di storici e storici economici in particolare. Si scambia una merce, ma con essa si trasportano lontano modalità produttive ed abitudini di consumo.
Non basta. Gli scambi, soprattutto quando si parli di età medievale e moderna, non sono pensabili se non nella forma organizzativa della rete mercantile. La rete mercantile, a base familiare od associativa, implica a sua volta una continua migrazione imprenditoriale. Tale migrazione non è in alternativa allo scambio di merci, ma ne è un presupposto organizzativo fondamentale. Laddove lo scambio, allora, rifletteva i vantaggi comparati esistenti in un dato momento storico tra due paesi, la rete mercantile era il mezzo attraverso il quale si esplicava la strategia operativa dei mercanti, strategia volta a cambiare i vantaggi comparati, spostando le produzioni, stimolando la migrazione di capitale finanziario, umano ed imprenditoriale, influenzando la cultura della produzione e del consumo. I mercanti sono così stati straordinari agenti di cambiamento e, nella loro consapevolezza strategica, anche analisti acuti dei costumi dei paesi nei quali andavano ad operare, quindi, disseminatori di cultura.

Milan´s onlookers in the middle of the nineteenth century saw an incredible richness apparently springing from the surrounding agriculture. Entrepreneurship, on the contrary, was considered scarce  and local manufactures judged as hopelessly lagging behind English ones. Even the financial sector was limited to a bunch of private banking and trading houses . Carlo Cattaneo, economist and publicist, aptly defined Milan´s economic élite as composed by rentiers, like old trees profoundly rooted in land, and by merchants seeking only to become landlords . L´eco della borsa, Milan´s economic newspaper, likely lamented “a certain disgust of our country´s capitalists to invest their funds in the uncertain sea of the so called industrial enterprises and the inveterate tendency of merchants to become landlords, causing an enormous amount of capital to flow into the estate market” .
Recent researches revaluate the at the time leading mercantile elite of the city, underlining its innovative and progressive stance , while positively comparing local economic variables with the rest of the Austrian Monarchy . Even such studies, though, cannot abide with the dependence of Lombardy´s economy from its precious exportables: silk and cheese. Like in all undeveloped countries Lombardy´s trade balance was consequently characterized by huge exports of agricultural products and imports of manufactures, without any sign that the richness generated by such trade could trigger a further development of the region .
In reality judging Lombardy´s economic performance through the distorted eyeglasses of the parallel industrialization of other European regions proves to be an historical absurdity. So long as silk trade provided local capitalists with huge profit differentials in respect to other manufacturing activities, most investments would be centred on that sector. The growing international trade involving Milan called for the specialization of the region in the agricultural sector. Specialization could only enhance the economy´s efficiency . In 1854 silk accounted so for 93% of total exports and Stefano Jacini approximated to 2.424 Million Austrian Lire the sum invested in Lombardy´s agriculture, contra just 384 funding manufacture and trade  (Table 1). At the time Lombardy´s agriculture absorbed capital seeking a secure haven in landed property but also speculative capital in the risky silk cycle. In just 40 days the financing of silk throwing mills required more than 60 Millions  and the profits guaranteed by the related intermediation even attracted foreign funds from nearby Switzerland and Frankfurt. Very little was apparently left for manufacturing enterprises. The industrial enquiry launched by the Chamber of Commerce in 1852  photographed manufacturers, constrained to a narrow local market and imperilled by foreign competition, whose greatest concern regarded excessive duties on raw material imports and the less than prohibitive duties on finished product imports . Even so Lombardy contributed to the total manufacturing production of the Austrian Monarchy with the second most relevant share after Bohemia . Considering the meagre investment sum at disposition this success confirms the economy´s efficiency in allocating resources among sectors and in engineering their high productivity. Such efficiency, confirmed by the leading role of Lombardy in Italy´s economic development after Unification, based neither on the Gerschenkronian substitution through banks and state, nor on modern corporations. Lombardy´s economy in the 1850´s, characterised by extensive networks of personal relations, credit by trust and family businesses, is still best defined as mercantile. Thanks to a sample including extensive data on almost two hundred firms in existence in Milan from 1852 to 1861 , collected from the surviving documents of Milan´s Chamber of Commerce, it is possible to reconstruct the mechanisms governing such economy: how liquidity was collected and distributed, how partnerships were formed, inside which social circles were partners found, how much kinship ties determined business decisions, what criteria proved relevant in the investment decision making processes, how were innovation and entrepreneurship rewarded.
The picture emerging from the sample will vindicate the capacity of Milan´s mercantile elite to foster innovation through the efficient allocation of capital and the creation of entrepreneurial capital, averting at the same time disastrous financial crises: the solid base of the successive development of the region.

Con il suo ultimo scritto inedito Tre rivoluzioni industriali, due guerre mondiali ed ora? Fanfani sveste i panni del politico per riprendere a guardare la realtà con gli occhi dello storico. Nel 1992 torna dunque a quella storia economica che lo aveva portato in cattedra nel 1936, quasi a ribadire che la visione storica che aveva guidato la sua azione di governo fosse quanto di più prezioso lasciare alle generazioni a venire. “Non ho fatto solo rievocazioni erudite, - scriveva Fanfani ai suoi studenti nel 1939 - né ho toccato problemi che interessano soltanto pochi specialisti. Il cultore di studi storici e sociali troverà qui accenni a molte delle questioni attualmente più dibattute”. E così dopo più di cinque decenni nell´inedito esordisce ancora: “In questa fine del XX secolo stiamo assistendo a straordinari sviluppi di una lunghissima storia multi millenaria”, sviluppi il cui significato Fanfani vuole rivelare da storico.
La storia economica di Fanfani, infatti, non è materialisticamente determinata come quella di Marx, né deve adeguarsi ad un ideale astratto come vorrebbe l´economia liberale, ma risponde alla volontà degli individui e da essi è indirizzata. Fanfani storico, dunque, come ricerca nel passato i segni dell´operare di questa volontà, così la osserva nel suo evolversi presente per indirizzarne, da politico, l´azione futura verso il progresso economico e civile. In questo modo l´inedito viene a rappresentare la summa
del pensiero storico di Fanfani, ma anche il suo testamento politico.

As Napoleon swept up the Continent, European societies faced alternative paths of modernization depending on the élite capable of directing the change. In Lombardy, a region deprived of an own nation state and of independence, the only viable way to modernization was that of economic changes guided by the mercantile élite. Not a nobility based on political participation, patriotism and civil rights but a nobility of work could substitute in Lombardy ancien régime values.
Attracted, as Napoleon soldiers, by the richness and the entrepreneurial opportunities of northern Italy, many merchants crossed the Alps to settle down in Lombardy. They didn´t bring warfare or pillages along them. Through their international networks they channelled into Lombardy capital, skilled workers and entrepreneurial capabilities. But their influence on the Italian region was not limited to manufacturing, organizational or financial innovation. Through their economic and social ascent an example was set as to how, through hard work, economic if not political independence could be achieved. Even governments respected this wealthy élite, being dependent on their availability to finance their growing public debt, on their intermediation to supply the necessary wares in a specializing and globalised Europe, and
on their capability to employ the population in new manufactures. The reforms to make this élite politically represented were not unique to the French government. The Austrian rule that preceded and followed Napoleon in Lombardy went the same path. Such political recognition reinforced the influence of the cosmopolitan merchant élite on Lombardy´s intellectuals and nobility. Around it rapidly coalesced a social grouping prone to innovation, liberalism, religious tolerance and favorable to federative aggregations. Beginning with the Napoleonic age such aggregation was capable of
directing Lombardy´s modernization well before Italy´s political independence.

Per i fiorentini del Quattrocento i rapporti economici erano regolati da precetti morali sanciti istituzionalmente dal governo cittadino o dal corpus teologico della scolastica, volgarizzato dagli ordini minori. La storia del pensiero economico di questo periodo, dunque, si è soprattutto preoccupata di studiare la variazione nel tempo di tali precetti, cercandovi una spia dell’affrancamento dell’homo oeconomicus dalla servitù religiosa, del prevalere della razionalità capitalistica su quella medievale. L’accurata disamina delle questioni del giusto prezzo, dell’usura e del giusto salario da parte dei predicatori francescani e domenicani sarebbero, in questo senso, la spia del soffocante impedimento che la religione, cattolica, poneva al libero esprimersi del mercato, ma anche, proprio a Firenze nel Quattrocento, del cumularsi di eccezioni e scappatoie che permettevano ai mercanti di prosperare nei traffici nonostante la contrarietà di fondo della Chiesa a riconoscere alla moneta un ruolo economico fruttifero ed allo scambio una sua giustizia intrinseca.
La recente scoperta che i predicatori fiorentini del Quattrocento avrebbero semplicemente ripreso, temperandole, tesi ben precedenti, rende discutibile questa visione evoluzionista e positivista. Il pensiero economico, insomma, non avrebbe marciato di pari passo con il favoleggiato espandersi dell’economia di mercato su una linea del tempo che vuole il finire, proprio con il Quattrocento, del medioevo e l’inizio dell’età moderna. E’, allora, necessario ripensare la formulazione del pensiero economico fiorentino del Quattrocento, soprattutto quello espresso dagli ordini minori, inquadrandolo nel mutare vorticoso dell’assetto istituzionale, della struttura sociale, della vita economica della città. Non solo di idee si trattava in quel tempo ed in quel luogo: i precetti di teologi e predicatori su questioni economiche erano parte integrante dell’impalcatura normativa sulla quale si reggeva la vita cittadina.
In questo senso l’affannoso cercare, da parte di pastori preoccupati della salute spirituale del proprio gregge, di ricostruire tramite precetti morali l’assenza di regole o il diffuso disattendere regole oramai considerate obsolete, è uno specchio della profonda crisi istituzionale che colse Firenze nella seconda metà del Quattrocento. Crisi alla quale si cercò soluzione non affrancando l’homo oeconomicus, ma piuttosto allontanando definitivamente i mercanti dal governo della città. Si sanciva così una rottura tra interesse privato e bene comune che perdurerà fino al Settecento della favola delle api di Bernard de Mandeville e della mano invisibile di Adam Smith.
Di seguito si cercherà di inquadrare il pensiero economico del Quattrocento fiorentino proprio alla luce dell’evoluzione, nella teoria come nella pratica, del complesso rapporto tra attività privata volta al profitto ed attività pubblica volta al bene comune. Dapprima si esporranno le considerazioni in questo senso dei teologi e filosofi del tempo, per poi verificare, con l’analisi iconografica della figura dei Magi, quanto i mercanti del tempo si riconoscessero nel ruolo di produttori di ricchezza privata e pubblica. La crisi di questo modello valoriale e del corrispettivo assetto istituzionale sarà, infine, analizzata nelle sue cause e nelle sue conseguenze, anche per il successivo pensiero economico.

Da Jean Jacques Rousseau alle rivoluzioni del 1848 si dipana un´epoca definita dalla libertà. Dall´infrangersi del vecchio ordine sociale, dalla lunga agonia dell´ancien regime emerge, infatti, un uomo che si sente tale solo in quanto libero. La libertà diventa la dimensione essenziale dell´umanità e, con Immanuel Kant, persino il fondamento della metafisica. La pedagogia, in questo senso, poteva e doveva essere unicamente educazione alla libertà, la scienza del rendere liberi gli uomini: “il problema più grande e difficile che possa venire imposto all´uomo” .
Le Avventure di Pinocchio di Carlo Lorenzini  rappresentano un frutto tardo e maturo di questo secolo di libertà, un Bildungsroman dal chiaro intento pedagogico. Con il suo burattino, lanciato a rotta di collo tra le più mirabolanti avventure, Lorenzini risponde così a domande senza tempo. Si nasce liberi o burattini? Chi o cosa limita la libertà dell´uomo? Quale tipo di educazione permette all´uomo di conquistare o riconquistare la sua libertà?
Il monito dello scrittore toscano, ricordiamolo mazziniano, combattente nelle guerre d´Indipendenza e feroce critico di ogni ordine costituito che non rispettasse la libertà individuale , è pedagogicamente durissimo: nella fame, nella svogliatezza, nell´indifferenza agli affetti familiari, nell´ignoranza, svela i fili di tanti burattini, uomini ridotti a pezzi di legno in balia della volontà altrui. “Sia detto a nostra vergogna. – scriveva Lorenzini nel 1858 sulla Lente - Lo schiavo non è un privilegio esclusivo della America! Anche la civilissima Europa ha i suoi schiavi: anche fra i popoli tirati a pulimento, anche in mezzo alla nostra Società a scagliola si trovano degli individui, così decaduti da ogni diritto civile, che per la loro durissima condizione non hanno nulla da invidiare a un coltivatore di canne da zucchero” . Un monito che tra i lazzi, i motti di spirito, i richiami al teatro, alla satira, le invenzioni fantasiose e le situazioni tragicomiche, mantiene la sua validità in ogni luogo ed in ogni tempo, invitando a riflettere sull´essenza stessa dell´umanità, ancora oggi troppo spesso negata a tanti, troppi burattini.

The paper is based on extensive research done in Milan's Chamber of Commerce. The resulting database of 176 founding acts of businesses registered in the 1850s allows an unique insight in the functioning mechanisms of Lombardy's economy: how liquidity was collected and distributed, how partnerships were formed, inside which social circles were partners found, how much kinship ties determined business decisions, what criteria proved relevant in the investment decision making processes, how were innovation and entrepreneurship rewarded. Based on the richness of the data collected several conclusions were drawn on business forms, partners characteristics and innovation. The picture emerging from the sample vindicates the capacity of Milan's merchant élite to foster innovation through the efficient allocation of capital and the creation of entrepreneurial capital, averting at the same time disastrous financial crises: the solid base of the successive development of the region.

Abstract During the nineteenth century entrepreneurial migrations were a continent-and possibly world-wide phenomenon that had less to do with the absence of entrepreneurial forces in a certain location as with the circulation of human, entrepreneurial and venture ...