Augusto Graziani on Italian Economic Development (1950–1970)

Italian economic thought between the 1960s and 1990s provided important scientific contributions and one of its most authoritative representatives was certainly Augusto Graziani (1933–2014). On the international plane, Graziani is mainly known for his monetary theory of production while his theory of development and his analysis of the Italian economic have drawn relatively little debate. The purpose of this work is to illustrate his analysis of development in the light of two main considerations: (i) Graziani was very interested in long-term development issues for a long time. The 1969 collective book Lo sviluppo di un’economia aperta (The development of an open economy), the various editions of his L’economia italiana (The Italian economy) (1972, 1979 and 1989) and his contributions on the economy of Southern Italy (Mezzogiorno) are part of an organic, continuous, detailed and impressive explanatory work of the economic events that affected Italy from the 1950s onward and on which Graziani devoted more than thirty years of his scientific activity. (ii) His analysis of development offers interesting tools for interpreting the effects of some Italian policy choices critically debated by a part of the contemporary literature.