Economic Growth and Cycles in Italy, 1881-1913 Luigi Einaudi’s Interpretation Revisited

Since the 1950s, beginning with the Gerschenkron’s classical article, a great number of studies have dealt with the issue of the Italian economic growth in the post-unification period. In this regard, an important work of reconstructing of historical data series has been accomplished, particularly by Fenoaltea. However, Fenoaltea’s analysis underestimates the short-term cyclical variability of the Italian economy in the sub-period 1893-1913, a phenomenon on the contrary emphasized in the neglected qualitative-quantitative analyses conducted by Luigi Einaudi and colleagues in the early twentieth century. This paper uses various advanced spectral methods to reconsider Italian economic growth and cycles in the post-Unification period in an attempt to evaluate Einaudi’s interpretation of Italian cyclical economic growth. Our analysis substantially confirms the soundness of Einaudi’s interpretation.