Edizioni FrancoAngeli - Last issue of HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND POLICY (1/2012)

Editorial

Mon, 15 Jan 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Piero Bini, Pier Francesco Asso

Keynes and the Welfare State

Mon, 15 Jan 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Roger E. Backhouse, Bradley W. Bateman
This paper considers the question of what influence J.M. Keynes had on the evolution of the welfare state after the Second World War. First it weighs whether his non-utilitarian approach to economic theory and welfare measurement had an impact on the growth of the welfare state. Then it considers whether the influence came through Keynes’s advocacy of deficit spending. After rejecting both of these explanations the role of full employment in sustaining the welfare state is weighed. The paper concludes with a consideration of what might be necessary in preserving the welfare state in the face of the recent financial crisis and the sovereign debt crises that have emerged subsequent to the crisis.

Marshall on Progress and People's Welfare

Mon, 15 Jan 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Tamotsu Nishizawa
The paper focuses on Marshall’s ideas of the economic and socio-ethical progress, of the development of man’s higher faculties, and of people’s welfare and improvement of their quality of life. The studies on economic and social progress with prospects for the elimination of human poverty and the higher development of human faculties, were ‘the high theme’ and the crucial ideas of his whole economics writings of Marshall. For him ‘the solution of economic problems was not an application of the hedonistic calculus, but a prior condition of the exercise of man’s higher faculties’. The paper stresses a nonutilitarian perspective. The first section examines the man’s economic conditions and human character, work and life, economic and ethical progress. Then the second section discusses about the ideas moralizing capitalism and citizenship, which is followed by the section on education and strength of the people; and supported by the discussions on the cumulative effects of people’s wages in the final section.

Luigi Einaudi and the Making of the Neoliberal Project

Mon, 15 Jan 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Fabio Masini
The first 1947 meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society is considered the date of birth of neoliberalism. But the neoliberal thought after WWII is the result of fervent intellectual efforts in the previous decades. The paper aims at highlighting the role of Luigi Einaudi to the making of the neoliberal project, enquiring into the intellectual foundations of his thought on the institutions of international liberalism.

James Meade’s Liberalism

Mon, 15 Jan 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Roger E. Backhouse
James Meade described himself as a liberal and used the term neo-classical to describe his economic theory but unlike many liberals he sought to improve the market economy. This paper explores Meade’s liberalism through analyzing his writings on planning, the market, justice and income distribution, concluding that he is best described, somewhat paradoxically, as a pragmatic visionary.

Franco Modigliani and the Italian Left-Wing: the Debate over Labor Cost (1975-1978)

Mon, 15 Jan 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Francesco Cattabrini
In 1975 in Italy, as a result of an agreement between the Trade Unions and the Italian Manufacturers’ Association, the escalator clause mechanism was changed, establishing a 100% indexation of wages to the rate of inflation. This crucial event led to the so-called “Modigliani controversy”. This paper aims to examine the debate that arose in Italy following Franco Modigliani’s proposals over labor cost. Our main focus will be on the public debate that raised among economists, the majority of whom were part of the wide intellectual area gravitating around the left wing. Modigliani’s contributions sharpened the conflicts within the left and this resulted in a debate that ended with the acceptance of “Modigliani’s recipe”: a reduction in real wages was deemed necessary to bring Italy out of the economic crisis.

Technological Effects on Wages and Labour: Classical and Neoclassical Ideas

Mon, 15 Jan 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Anastassios D. Karayiannis, Ioannis A. Katselidis
The introduction of new technology may have significant effects on the level of employment and the real wage rate; effects that have received considerable attention even from the economic thinkers of the classical period. This paper aims to analyze and evaluate the various views and arguments of early classical and neoclassical economists concerning the technological effects on wages and employment. On the one hand, the economists of the early decades of the 19th century (mainly between 1800 and 1840) had recognized and analyzed many of the effects of technology on labourers’ welfare. On the other hand, early neoclassical theorists of the period between 1890 and 1935 tried to expand on the classical views and to develop their own theoretical arguments, based on new perceptions like the marginal productivity theory. The main conclusion drawn is that most of early classical and neoclassical economists recognized and specified the temporary adverse effects of new technology on labour (e.g. short-run unemployment), but, at the same time, they argued for the beneficial long-run consequences of technological progress on labourers’ welfare.

Book reviews

Mon, 15 Jan 2012 8:00:00 GMT

This paper reviews the classics of financial economics with the benefit of insight offered by the recent financial crisis. The failure of mainstream financial models to explain the observed behavior of markets is put in relation with Itzhak Gilboa’s critique of the decisional model used for assessing choice under uncertainty. The paper argues that Gilboa’s attempt to develop an alternative theory of decision under uncertainty has a clear Keynesian derivation.

Warren J. Samuels (1933-2011)

Mon, 15 Jan 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Malcolm Rutherford

Some Reflections on Economics and the Natural Sciences

Mon, 15 Jan 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Ivo Maes

The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America turns twenty (1991-2011)

Mon, 15 Jan 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Daniela Parisi