Summary — The purpose of the article is threefold: first to review and explain why the Italian school of fiscal theory and more specifically the work of Francesco Ferrara have until recently had little impact in the history and theory of political economy in the English-speaking world; second, to draw attention to the influence of Ferrara’s ideas in the development of the public choice school in the past thirty years; and, finally, to suggest that this new field of inquiry may lead to a renewed appreciation of Ferrara's ideas. James M. Buchanan deserves credit for rescuing from oblivion the work of Ferrara and, generally more, of the Italian school of fiscal theory. Public choice, of which Buchanan is a founding father, is based in part on this Italian contribution and it is in this sense that Ferrara appears as a nineteenth-century precursor. The rapid expansion of public choice analysis in at least three important subfields of inquiry associated with the Virginia, the Rochester and the Bloomington Schools suggest how much of the criticism levelled against some elements of public choice, such as rationality, are misdirected and how the growth of institutional analysis and development associated with the Bloomington school can lead to a renewed appreciation of Ferrara’s contribution. Just as Ferrara’s ideas helped to fashion public choice, to the growth of public choice and rational choice theory, more generally, provides the intellectuals tools for a reconstruction of Ferrara's underlying political theory and logic of inquiry. Against this backdrop, the article suggests, in effect, that fears of an economic imperialism of social science and of an Americanization of Italian social science, in particular, are misplaced.