Final Reflections on an Episode in Italian Thought

In terms of the criteria established for this study, it is legitimate to refer to the Paretian episode in Italian intellectual history as a ‘school of thought’. Within this school, the contribution of Pareto’s followers was significant, with work on the economic and sociological problems of public finance marking the most unique and distinctly Paretian development in Italian thought to have occurred in the second and third decades of the twentieth century. In the fiscal sociology that was developed during this period, the issue of social equilibrium played a central role. Nevertheless, this approachto fiscal studies went into decline from the 1930s as it achieved only limited success in establishing new general scientific uniformities pertaining to fiscal events. In the early 1950s there was a partial reprise in Paretian fiscal thought with Scotto’s analysis of fiscal decentralisation being based on reflections on the Paretian approach to sociology and public finances. However, the treatment of the issue was not fully integrated with the Paretian notion of social equilibrium and the broad approach to fiscal studies associated with Gino Borgatta and Guido Sensini was not developed further by Scotto or other scholars. Nevertheless, integrating Scotto’s analysis with that of Borgatta and Sensini offers some potential benefit to modern fiscal studies, especially in the light of the current interest within contemporary public economics in the relationship between fiscal decentralisation and economic growth.