{"title":"Niels Thygesen: An Academic in the Making of European Monetary Union","authors":"I. Maes, Sabine Péters","doi":"10.3280/SPE2020-001005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3280/SPE2020-001005","url":null,"abstract":"Niels Thygesen (born 1934) played for nearly five decades an influential role as a policy orientated academic, especially in the process of economic and monetary integration in Europe. He is especially known as a member of the Delors Committee and as the first Chair of the European Fiscal Board. As part of a re-search program on collecting memories, this paper publishes the results of several interviews with him. His early life offers insightful observations on the develop-ment of the economics profession in the postwar years (he was close to Nobel Prize laureates as Franco Modigliani and Milton Friedman). Thygesen's involvement with the process of European monetary integration really started in 1974 with his membership of the Marjolin Committee (which provided an assessment of the failure of the 1970 Werner Report). Since then he has been involved in a multitude of committees and initiatives, like the OPTICA groups, the All Saints Day Manifes-to, the Committee for Monetary Union in Europe (an initiative of Giscard and Schmidt) and the Euro50 Group.","PeriodicalId":40401,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Thought and Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47631384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Interpreting the path of Italian economic thought: The contribution of Eraldo Fossati","authors":"M. Pomini","doi":"10.3280/SPE2020-001002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3280/SPE2020-001002","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we focus on the figure of Eraldo Fossati, He was a protagonist of the development of Italian economic thought in the central decades of the last century. At the beginning he tried to dynamize the Paretian theory of general equilibrium. In the first phase he emphasized the role of true uncertainty following the Austrian tradition. Ended a short corporatist parenthesis, after the second world war he supported the Keynesian theory and made an original proposal to reconcile Pareto and Keynes, considering the latter not as a revolutionary economist but rather as an innovator who furnished new tools to understanding the real workings of contemporary economic systems with their chronic unemployment. In fact, after the Second World War Fossati was one of the main exponents of the Keynesian turn in Italy.","PeriodicalId":40401,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Thought and Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48836268","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reshaping the external constraint. Franco Modigliani, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa and the EMS, 1977-1993","authors":"G. Piluso","doi":"10.3280/SPE2020-002006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3280/SPE2020-002006","url":null,"abstract":"During a decade of stagflation in the 1970s, a sea of changes on the interna-tional stage led to major macroeconomic imbalances that gave central bankers a different role in relation to governments and policy-makers. In Europe, this coin-cided with the relaunching of the project for European integration. The Italian case shows how governments and central bankers interacted in shaping adjustment strategies. The Bank of Italy had a pivotal role in shaping the country's economic policies, relying on its capacity for economic analysis. The adjustment strategy formulated in the \"Pandolfi Plan\" of 1978 was conceived largely by an economist at the Bank of Italy, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa. Further developing analyses conducted jointly with Franco Modigliani the previous year, the plan focused on the macroeconomic effects of high labour costs in the wake of a full (\"100% and plus\") wage indexing and rising government deficits. The policy proposal revolved around a few targets, namely investments and economic growth, and an explicit principle of fairness in the labour market. The Pandolfi Plan pledged to Italy's en-during participation in the European integration process by combining economic development with adhesion to the \"European choice\", which meant joining the European Monetary System (EMS). The European agreements governing EMS membership replaced the standard external economic constraints, i.e. the balance of payments and exchange rate, with a new kind of semi-legal external constraint ingrained in the governance structure of the European Community. The nature of this new semi-legal external constraint as a fiscal discipline mechanism eventually emerged more clearly with the Maastricht Treaty.","PeriodicalId":40401,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Thought and Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44353411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Luigi Luzzatti and the making of the Italian monetary system","authors":"S. Solari","doi":"10.3280/SPE2020-002004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3280/SPE2020-002004","url":null,"abstract":"After unification (1861) Italy had to face a badly integrated and oddly struc-tured financial system as well as some fragmented or lacking institutions. The fi-nancial position of the country was characterised by double deficit in public and external balance. That caused several monetary and financial difficulties. In par-ticular, monetary and banking institutions had to be step-by-step integrated and reorganised to support economic development in this new economic space. Luigi Luzzatti has been one of the main protagonists of this process of institution build-ing. Besides his commitment with trade tariff negotiation and a variety of initiative in industry and environmental protection, he dedicated a wide effort to monetary institutions. He was one of the main supporters of the \"Latin Monetary Union\", which lasted from 1865 to 1928 and contributed to reforms dealing with the prob-lem of the plurality of emission banks and of their control. Luzzatti also engaged in the development of \"popular banks\" to contribute to the structuring of the credit system from the bottom.","PeriodicalId":40401,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Thought and Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42693423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Italian money doctors: Introduction","authors":"Gianfranco Tusset","doi":"10.3280/SPE2020-002001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3280/SPE2020-002001","url":null,"abstract":"The relationship between economic theory and politics, a long-standing feature of economic debate, is particularly articulated in the figure of the money doctor. But who are these money doctors? From the now extensive literature on the topic, we can extract some characteristics that money doctors share. They are mainly concerned with crises or instability (Flandreau 2003), they make suggestions regarding the use of foreign financing (Drake 1984), and they support political coalitions by proposing possible reforms (Hirschman 1965). They also do much more, however. The history of money doctoring begins not with the 20th century, but much earlier, and money doctors’ actions have inevitably adapted to the political and cultural setting in the country where they have operated. While much has been written on the part played by money doctors in specific contexts, there is less literature on the real effectiveness of money doctoring, and on the figure of the money doctor. Little has been written about the sources inspiring the money doctors’ actions, which range from abstract theory to technical rules, from ethical principles to mere observation of reality, and more. It is certainly common for money doctors to have a background in economic studies, but it would be wrong to say that their actions stem from the mere application of economic/monetary theories. In this volume, we have tried to take these aspects into account in a collection of essays on money doctoring in Italy. The country has had a lengthy tradition in this field, beginning in the mid-18th century (a time of economic reforms) and up until the end of the 20th, when Italy became part of the European monetary system. During the 19th century, money doctoring in Italy was done by Italians in an industrially still backward country where monetary experts were called on to advise the ruler or policy-maker. At that time,","PeriodicalId":40401,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Thought and Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47619646","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Carlo Antonio Broggia, a money doctor \"in adverse circumstances\"","authors":"Rosario Patalano","doi":"10.3280/SPE2020-002002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3280/SPE2020-002002","url":null,"abstract":"The debate on monetary reform in the Italian Enlightenment Age was initiated by Carlo Antonio Broggia, a ‘self-taught' Neapolitan merchant, who in 1743 pub-lished the Treatise on taxes, money, and the policy of public health, the main trea-tise on the subject published in Italy before Galiani's Della Moneta and the Nea-politan abbot himself recognized its importance, considering Broggia the first to promote om Italy the study of a very useful and noble science. Broggia proposed a complex monetary stabilization program, basing it on a detailed theoretical analysis, breaking with the tradition of the monetary writers, who throughout the seventeenth century, prompted by the serious disorders besetting the Viceroyalty, had dealt with technical issues, without the will or the ability to produce an organic analytical contribution. In his Treatise, the Neapolitan merchant tackles the prob-lem of the stability of a bimetallic monetary system, troubled by the continuous modification of the commercial relationship between gold and silver, resorting pre-cisely to the maneuver of tariffs (i.e. of imaginary money), in order to sterilize the fluctuations of the bimetallic ratio. Despite the high level of Broggia's contribution, his advice was not accepted and in the Kingdom of Naples the monetary stabiliza-tion policy failed completely. As a money doctor ante litteram Broggia acted in adverse circumstances openly opposing the policy of some ministers. Remaining unheard, he addressed the prince and public opinion directly, suffering the most drastic consequences. However, his ideas spread widely and were also welcomed by intellectuals such as Muratori who played a decisive role in the renewal of Ital-ian culture in the mid-eighteenth century.","PeriodicalId":40401,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Thought and Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45423486","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Money as a political institution in the commentaries of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas to Aristotle's \"Ethica Nicomachea\"","authors":"Tommaso Brollo","doi":"10.3280/spe2019-002002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3280/spe2019-002002","url":null,"abstract":"Often, contemporary studies maintain that mediaeval thinkers regarded money as a commodity, a metal valuable only according to its intrinsic value; however, a thorough textual examination reveals that they were first and foremost concerned with its institutional dimension as a nomothetic moment of community building. This contribution aims at clarifying the late mediaeval conceptualisation of the nature of money as it emerges from the commentaries of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas to Aristotle’s Ethica, V.8. \"Talis fluxus et refluxus gratiarum commanere facit civitatem\", notices Albert the Great, portraying money as an institution that guarantees this flow of mutual reciprocation. Money was then seen as the institution which brought together the different parts of the productive community, whose perpetuation was ensured via the government of the monetary system, allowing for balance among the interests of debtors and creditors, producers and rentiers, merchants and labourers.","PeriodicalId":40401,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Thought and Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45491588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Lesson from Bretton Woods On the Occasion of the 75th Anniversary of the Conference","authors":"A. Magliulo","doi":"10.3280/spe2019-002006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3280/spe2019-002006","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40401,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Thought and Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43668199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What Went Wrong. The Failure of the 1993 Delors' White Paper","authors":"Fabio Masini","doi":"10.3280/SPE2019-002004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3280/SPE2019-002004","url":null,"abstract":"In the late 1980s and early 1990s a process was started that would lead to the single currency in Europe. The choice made for its governance relied on an intergovernmental monitoring over convergence, based on the strict compliance to the Maastricht criteria. The White Paper of the Delors’s Commission on Growth, Competitiveness, Employment was issued in September 1993 to face the new internal and external threats to the European economies. It provided a framework for policy-action that should accompany the building of the euro and help the European economy survive the challenges of globalization, sustainability and new ICTs. The paper aims to examine the White Paper of 1993, and to analyse the reasons why it was neglected and eventually set aside by the member States, thus weakening the long-term prospects of the European economy and the sustainability of the forthcoming European single currency.","PeriodicalId":40401,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Thought and Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46380987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Economic Discourse of Joseph Garnier in Spain","authors":"J. Andreu, Estrella Trincado","doi":"10.3280/spe2019-002001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3280/spe2019-002001","url":null,"abstract":"In the 19th century the liberal author Joseph Garnier (1813-1881) had a clear influence on Spanish economists; however, his discourse has not been much studied in the literature. His Elements were adopted as an economics textbook at Spanish universities and it was one of the most recommended books on political economy. In contrast, other authors such as John Stuart Mill were not so well received. A study of the reasons for this influence in the context of nineteenth-century Spain is therefore needed. This article aims to fill this gap and highlight the work of Garnier who facilitated the diffusion of the free-trade doctrine and the rationalization of the administration in Spain.","PeriodicalId":40401,"journal":{"name":"History of Economic Thought and Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41739169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}