An economic history of Italy from Italian unification to reconstruction after World War II. Includes analysis of the effects of agriculture, banking, commerce, and emigration on the economy of the country. .

The Economic History of Italy 1860-1990 gives a scholarly and authoritative account of Italy's progress from a rural economy to an industrialized nation, covering in detail agriculture, trade, banking, public intervention, the standard of living, and education. It provides an interpretativeaccount of the economic history of Italy since unification and offers an extensive resource of quantitative data. Professor Zamagni argues that Italy only effectively became an industrialized nation after the Second World War, with the south still being clearly behind the rest of the country. Her argument makes use of both macroeconomic approaches, in looking at the growth of income, investment, consumption,trade, and the role of the state, and microeconomic approaches, drawing conclusions from the history of individual banks and corporations. Italy's movement from peripheral status in Europe to a central position as a prosperous country was achieved through a remarkable flexibility in adapting newtechnology and new institutions.

This book, first published in 1990, examines Italy’s economic history from its Unification in 1850 to the end of the First World War. Particular attention is paid to the extent to which Italy exhibits the features of Kaznets’s model of ‘modern economic growth’. An Economic History of Liberal Italy begins with a quantitative assessment of Italy’s long-term growth in this period. All of the main relevant variables – including production, consumption, investment, foreign trade, government spending, and welfare – are discussed. The book proceeds through a chronological account of the developments of the economy during this period, and concludes with a critical survey of the relevant historiography. Throughout the book emphasis is given to structural changes, to developments in the main industries, to the relations between different sectors of the economy, and to economic policies. This book is ideal for those studying economics of Italian history.

This book is the first to provide English readers with a brief and comprehensive survey of economic life in Italy during the period of its greatest splendour: the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The wealth of Renaissance Italy was the product of centuries of growth, and the great Renaissance cities, Venice, Milan and Florence, were first and foremost centres of international trade, which taught the rest of Europe the rudiments of modern business techniques. In a masterly synthesis, based upon a lifetime of study and research, Professor Gino Luzzatto, the greatest of living Italian historians, describes the main changes in Italian economic conditions from the end of the Roman Empire, when Italy ceased to be the centre of a European state, to the end of the Middle Ages when Italy lost the leadership of European trade and banking. The narrative chapters, which deal with barbarian Italy, feudal Italy and Italy in the age of the communes, are followed by a valuable analysis of medieval agriculture, industry, commerce and finance, in her principal Italian states. The range of discussion is wide and offers an excellent introduction to the economic history not only of Italy but of the whole Mediterranean region. This classic text was first published in 1961.

A brief, up-to-date account of Italy's transformation from an agrarian state to an industrial powerhouse.

Recent decades have seen many economic history books and articles published about working men and women, small and big entrepreneurs, guilds and state manufactures, farmers and journeymen, and children and citizens. Studies have been conducted both at a macro and a micro level, at a global and at a local scale and with regional and national approaches aimed at analysing cultural, social and economic phenomena associated with the world of work. Yet, there is still new ground to be covered. This book aims to fill a gap in early modern history by presenting new insights in the study of global labour history. It considers the whole Italian peninsula as one geographical unit of analysis, encompassing all of the features that characterize labour cultures during the early modern period. It details the evolution of forms of labour in both agriculture and manufacture and the role of labour as an economic, social and cultural factor in the evolution of the Italian area.