The Reinterpretation of Italian Economic History: From Unification to the Great War

by Stefano Fenoaltea

• ISBN13: 9780521192385
• ISBN10: 0521192382
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-06-30
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book argues that post-Unification Italy was part of a wider world within which men and money circulated freely, and that it developed to the extent that those mobile resources chose to locate on its soil. The medium-term variations in the economy's growth rate were due primarily not to policy measures within Italy itself but to the long cycle in British capital exports, which affected the entire capital-importing periphery. State policy reduced the long-term growth rate by limiting Italy's capacity to attract, or retain, mobile resources, especially by restricting the mobility of goods. Tariff protection in particular kept Italy weak, reduced its weight in the comity of nations, and paved the way for the frustrations and adventurism that would plunge the twentieth century into world war.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The time series and the interpretations

The investment cycle

The consumption cycle and the 'crisis' of the 1880s

Protection and migration

Railways

North and south

The state of play

Appendices: tariffs, trade, migration and growth

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