1,720,974 research outputs found
‘When We Were Worse off'. The Economy, Living Standards and Inequality in Fascist Italy
No full textThis paper offers a critical survey of the recent quantitative economic history literature on the evolution of the Italian economy under fascism. The new evidence on GDP and industrial output validates the rejection of classic interpretations of «fascism as stagnation», highlighting factors of continuity in the long-run process of industrialization and development. The evidence on wages, economic wellbeing and inequality (including some estimates of gender gaps), however, suggests a discontinuity with the «benevolence» of the liberal period, and the ineffectiveness of the fascist welfare state. New research is needed to further develop our understanding of the effects of specific policies
Fenoaltea in the Italian Mirror: Recollections by a Student of His
Full text linkInternationally renowned as a brilliant researcher, Stefano Fenoaltea was also an outstanding teacher of economic history and economics. In this brief contribution, a former student of his during his latest years in the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, who was later tutored by him as a Fondazione Einaudi Fellow, share his memories and impressions of Fenoaltea as a teacher and mentor
Labor shares and inequality: insights from Italian economic history, 1895–1970
No full textThis article develops theoretical and practical motivations for studying the functional distribution of income in the past. Italy is adopted as a case study, because of the availability of long-run estimates on personal inequality and of the long-lasting incidence of self-employment. New labor shares for 1895–1970 show Italian workers accruing a low share of income until 1945; by the end of the 1950s, they rapidly converged to the European average. Italian history shows that functional income distribution deepens our understanding of long- and short-run distributional trends and makes a compelling case for approaching inequality by combining diverse sources and methodologies
Fiscal Sources and the Distribution of Income in Italy: The Italian Historical Taxpayers' Database
Full text linkThis paper documents the ongoing construction of the Italian Historical Taxpayers’ Database (IHTD), currently consisting of 1,593,563 micro-records of income declarations filed by Italian autonomous workers in 1889, 1922 and 1933. Such a database results from the digitisation of a so far overlooked source, the printed lists of taxpayers’ declarations for some categories of the Imposta di ricchezza mobile, the most important Italian direct tax on income until the early 1970s. To contribute to the ‘rediscovery’ of these sources (and Italian fiscal sources in general), the paper surveys the history of the taxpayers’ lists in post-unification Italy, as well as the ‘classic’ arguments against the reliability of fiscal sources, in the light of available evidence. This makes possible to discuss how, while inevitably affected by biases and limitations, these sources offer historians a new perspective on the incomes of important social groups, and do so with an unparalleled level of granularity in terms of activities, geography, and gender, contributing in this way to the history of inequality during the Fascist period, and potentially to the broader economic history of post-unification Italy
"Non-Competing Social Groups"? The Long Debate on Social Mobility in Italy (c. 1890-1960)
No full textIn the light of the recent literature on the intellectual history of inequality, this paper offers the first survey and a tentative classification of the Italian literature addressing issues related to social mobility, from late-19th century to the 'Economic Miracle' of the 1950s. During these decades, the foremost Italian economists and statisticians (among others, Pareto, Gini, Einaudi and Pantaleoni) worked on issues, from the role of inheritance to the intergenerational transmission of status, which are very related to the modern understanding of social mobility. While reflecting the evolution and debates in Italian society, these authors participated to a broader international debate, that should lead us to reconsider the lack of interest for inequality by economists in this period
Growth, Accumulation, and Distribution in Italy under Fascism: Continuity and Discontinuity between Politics and Economics|CRESCITA, ACCUMULAZIONE E DISTRIBUZIONE IN ITALIA DURANTE IL FASCISMO. CESURE E CONTINUITÀ TRA POLITICA ED ECONOMIA
No full textThe paper surveys the macro-economic history of Italy in the interwar decades (including the Great War and the post-war crisis), forty years after Gianni Toniolo's comprehensive attempt, in the light of the recent literature on quantitative estimates of national accounts, industrial production, economic well-being, and economic inequality. The newly interpreted facts, as well as the limitations of these reconstructions, are related to the classic debates on the fascist economy, and more recent developments in contemporary history on the period. In this sense, the inclusion of indicators on the distribution of income between factors of production, different percentiles, and social groups, allows us to appreciate more continuity than that suggested by both changes in economic policy and the trend of economic growth and industrial production
L'“altra metà” della scienza economica: la misurazione della disuguaglianza in Italia tra le due guerre
No full textA cavallo tra la storia della statistica e la storia del pensiero economico, il fondamentale
contributo italiano alla misurazione delle disuguaglianze è stato sinora perlopiù discusso nei suoi
aspetti metodologici (come lo sviluppo dell’indice di Gini) e teorici (la celebre legge di Pareto). Nell’ambito
di un recente interesse storiografico per l’emergere di interesse sulla disuguaglianza, il presente
lavoro offre una prima panoramica dello studio empirico delle disuguaglianze economiche in
Italia negli anni a cavallo tra i due conflitti mondiali. Il lavoro si propone di analizzare l’evoluzione
della conoscenza della disuguaglianza in Italia, anche alla luce dei risultati recentemente ottenuti dagli
storici economici, e discuterne le implicazioni e motivazioni sul dibattito teorico e di politica economica
degli anni tra la prima e la seconda guerra mondiale.The «Other Half» of Economic Science: the Measurement of Economic Inequality in Italy between
the Two Wars ∙ The fundamental contribution by Italian scholars to inequality measurement has been
so far discussed mainly with a focus on methodological standpoint, such as the development of the
Gini index, or focusing on Pareto’s theoretical contribution. Given the renewed historiographic interest
in the emergence of inequality measurement, this paper offers a first survey of the Italian empirical
literature on measuring inequality, focusing on the period between the two World Wars. The paper
traces the evolution of empirical knowledge on economic inequality in Italy, comparing it with the
modern estimates by economic historians, and discusses the motivations of this research, as well as
their implications for the theoretical and policy debate in the period
Between Pareto and Gini: The Origins of Personal Inequality Measurement in Italy, 1894–1939
No full textThe Italian contribution to the emergence of modern inequality measurement has been, so far, mainly discussed from a methodological standpoint, or has focused on Vilfredo Pareto’s theoretical contribution. This article offers a first survey of the Italian empirical literature on measuring inequality, from the earliest contributions in the 1890s to the end of the interwar decades, discussing the motivations and the sociopolitical milieu in which this literature developed
Difendere la produzione, difendersi dalla redistribuzione. Note su alcuni aspetti economici della crisi dello stato liberale
No full textThis article returns to the classic problems of the industrialists’ and the middle classes’ growing distrust for liberal governments, and eventual support for Fascism, by placing them both in the context of the European post-war crisis and emphasizing their resistance towards labour unrest and progressive social and fiscal reforms. Focusing on different organised representations of economic interests, the article analyses the political struggles concerning industrial production and distribution/redistribution (notably, taxes). It concludes that the former was the field in which industrialists developed their ambition of exercising full control over the government, while the latter provided the ground for a convergence of the higher and middle classes against liberalism and labour
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