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, 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.

Carlo Bastasin and Gianni Toniolo provide a much-needed, up-to-date economic history of Italy from unification in 1861 to the present day. They show how, thirty years after unification, Italy began a long phase of convergence with more advanced economies so that by the late twentieth century Italy's per capita income reached the levels of Germany, France and the UK. From the mid-1990s, however, the Italian economy declined first in relative and then absolute terms. The authors describe the intertwined financial and institutional crises that eroded trust in the political system and in the economy at the exact juncture when new technologies and markets transformed the global economy. Longstanding problems of uneven levels of education and obsolete bureaucratic and judicial practices deepened the division between economically vibrant regions and the rest, causing polarization, political instability and rising public debt. Italy's contemporary malaise makes the country a test-case for understanding the implications of protracted declines in productivity and the flattening of GDP growth for the stability of western democracies, resulting in populism, mistrust and political instability.

In The Struggle for Development and Democracy Alessandro Olsaretti argues that we need significantly new theories of development and democracy to answer the problem posed by neoliberalism and the populist backlash, namely, uneven development and divisive politics heightened by the 9/11 attacks. This volume proposes a general theory of development and democracy, as part of a unified theory of power, emphasizing that development needs markets, civil society, and the state, and also the proper networks and interactions amongst markets, civil society, and the state. Imperialism undermines these interactions, and turns countries into providers of cheap land or labour. This book begins to sketch the mechanisms at work, and to answer one question: how did imperialist elites build their power? All royalties from sales of this volume will go to GiveWell.org in honour of Alessandro Olsaretti's memory.

This work, first published in 1977, is a reissue of a trailblazing work; the first textbook of economic history to deal comprehensively with the economic development of the whole continent in this period and to do so from a continental rather than a British perspective. But it is more than merely a textbook: it is an interpretative synthesis of the wide range of research on this subject in many countries. As such it will be an indispensable guide for teachers and will extend and improve the scope of teaching by making available for the first time in English the results of continental research. In addition, it is a work of fundamental interest to economists in which theories and hypotheses of economic development are now examined in a much wider historical context. In this way the book is an exploration of the objective validity of earlier theories and the starting point for further research into economic development and european history. The work covers the continental development of the German and French economies after 1870 and then in that context analyses the development of the smaller western economies. It then considers the relatively underdeveloped economies of eastern and southern Europe and includes the first attempt at a synthesis of economic development before 1914 in the Balkans. It concludes with an analysis of the international economy and its relationship to the economic development of the continent.

First published in 1989, Alon Kadish’s study re-examines the standard view held by historians of economic thought whereby economic history emerged from the historicist criticism of neoclassical economic theory. He also demonstrates how the discipline evolved as an extension of the study of history. The study will appeal to students and scholars in historiography, the development of higher education and in the history if economic thought in general, as well as all those interested in the evolution of Oxford and Cambridge.

The volumes in this set report and analyse European trade union responses to the 1970s economic crisis across a range of nations including, Germany, Italy, France, Britain and Sweden. The set will be of interest to those studying trade unions, industrial relations and European political economy.