Luigi Einaudi and Economic Freedom

Luigi Einaudi had a long and highly active life. When he published his first essays in 1893, Giuseppe Verdi had just completed the opera Falstaff; when Einaudi died at the age of 87, Federico Fellini had just achieved great success among the Italian public — and probably among English film aficionados as well — with his motion picture La Dolce Vita. A figure of great renown in national public life, Einaudi firmly believed in the interaction between Italian, European and American intellectual circles. He was a friend of figures such as Hayek, Huizinga and Röpke; he played a fundamental role in translating into Italian the works of numerous authors, including Beveridge, and he engaged in intense activity as a consultant for the Rockefeller Foundation, to the great benefit of many young Italian researchers, who were able to study at British and American university institutions during the Fascist period. For three decades he was the Italian correspondent of The Economist: thus it was partly through his eyes that politicians and businessmen from all over the world were able to acquire a perspective on Italian affairs.