This collection of papers proposes to trace the professional and personal fortunes of Maffeo Pantaleoni (1857-1924), an eminent and controversial Italian economist from the liberalist culture which in the early twentieth century perceived the shortcomings and dangers of the nascent monopolist concentrations. He was one of the founders of what we can today call the Italian school of economics and finance. These contributions examine his life, thought and works and his reputation since his death. His vital influence on economic history.

Nutrition -- Height -- Health -- Child labour -- Education -- Migration -- Income -- Inequality -- Poverty -- Wealth -- Vulnerability -- Human development -- Household budgets -- Cost of living

Piero Sraffa's work has had a lasting impact on economic theory and yet we know surprisingly little about the man behind it. This is the first intellectual biography of Sraffa and it details his working relationship with thinkers as diverse as Gramsci, Keynes, Wittgenstein as well as discussing the genesis of his major works.

Agricultural Economists in Early Twentieth-Century Italy describes how Italian agricultural economists collected information about the economy of Italy, between the Giolittian and the Fascist era. The book carefully describes three main forms of economic observation: enquiries, statistics, and farm surveys. For each of these forms of observation, the main participants to the investigation are discussed with their respective agendas, alongside the purposes of the investigation, and its practical constraints. This work introduces the concept of "stakeholder statistics", and stresses the two-way relation between the observer and the observed in the co-production of observational knowledge. Practices of observation developed together with agricultural economics as a discipline and a profession. The study of forms of investigation therefore shed light on the constitution of a coherent and self-conscious group of agricultural economists in Italy, and the scientific and methodological alliances they forged with agricultural economists elsewhere in Europe. Thanks to ambitious research projects, Ghino Valenti in the Giolittian period, and Arrigo Serpieri, after the First World War, led the transformation of Italian agricultural economists from agents of estate owners, to social and economic experts in the service of the Italian state. The group of agricultural economists who gathered around Serpieri played an important role in supplying the ideology of the agricultural elites with economic content, especially after the First World War, along lines that resemble the development of agrarian ideologies in other countries of Central Europe. This work discusses how observation entered the political debate on agricultural policies of the Fascist regime, namely the so-called Ruralismo.

Three experienced Italian sociologists explore the structural and cultural dimensions of poverty in their country. Comparing Italy’s regime with other European countries, they consider the interplay of conditions in the labour market, the family and welfare arrangements as causes of poverty. This in-depth analysis explores how forced familialism, unbalanced gender arrangements, territorial cleavages and sluggish growth have rendered Italy vulnerable to financial crisis. As old risks of poverty have worsened, new risks have emerged and children, the working poor and migrants have become the ‘new poor’. Combining theoretical and empirical tools, this is a topical fresh take on the understanding of poverty in Italy that is even more crucial considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.