Italian Public Economists and Keynes

The spread of Keynesian approach concerning the use of fiscal policies as a tool of stabilisation policy – throught the aggregate demand management – was delayed in Italy with respect to what happened in Europe and in u s a. In those countries Keynesian ideas made themselves Known from the forties, while in Italy we had to wait until the sixties – apart from some exceptions like Marrama and Napoleoni among the scholars of political economy, and Cosciani and Steve among the scholars of public finance. The paper analyses the main reasons of this delay, both among scholars of political economy and those of public finance (but remember that at that time the academic specialisation was less marked than today). Two elements seem to be prominent: the first one is the reltive isolation in which, between the two world wars, the Italian economists slipped, also as a consquence of the prevailing of fascist regime. A second complementary reason is represented by the Neoclassic theoretical background, with consequent free market attitude in economic policy of Einaudi and Bresciani Turroni, the unquestioned leaders of the generation of economists who were active during the forties and fifties. The paper stresses that a non secondary role was related to the difficult understanding of the novelty of the Keynesian approach, as it appears from the approximate and inaccurate way in which Keynesian ideas are presented in Italian papers of that period. The spread of Keynesian approach in Italy waited for a new generation of economists who studied after the war, when contacts with foreign theoretical streams are connected again and step by step strengthened.