Abstract
Autore:
Capussela A. L., Targetti Lenti R.
Titolo:
"Economia e istituzioni negli anni della ricostruzione"
The paper seeks to describe
and explain Italy’s growth performance in the
very short, but crucial, period since the end of
the World War II (1945) and the approval of
a “constitutional compromise” (1947). This
compromise, among the three main political
cultures - liberal-republican (‘citizens’), Christian
(the ‘human person’), and socialist (‘workers’)
- inspired the succeeding institutional
setting. Conservative interests were laying
the foundations for the administrative and
institutional continuity already in 1944. The
Constitution left Italy’s economic institutions
partially undefined. The centrist coalition, in
fact, chose not to adjust the public administration
to the new founding principles. It upholds
private property and safeguards the freedom
of enterprise, but allows legislation to direct it
to ‘social ends’(article 41). Besides early macroeconomic
stabilization and participation in
the Bretton Woods system, the main features
of the post-war equilibrium was the choice to
progressively open the economy to international
competition, to leave the goods, labour,
and capital markets essentially unreformed, to
preserve iri’s dominant role in heavy industry
and financial intermediation, and not to reform
the ordinary public administration. The paper
claims that economic policy decisions, in particular
those made in response to challenges
emerging from abroad, have played a major
role in determining productivity performance
through their impact on the quantity and quality
of investment and innovation. We develop
an institutional approach of catch-up growth
from an initial position where the level of per
capita income was well below than that of the
leading economies until the 1947 monetary
stabilization in Italy. We then trace the domestic
and international political dynamics that
allowed ideas and theoretical concepts to be
developed by Bank of Italy and to be applied
in order to contain spiraling inflation. The paper
claims that the combination of events and
circumstances necessary for this successful
outcome in a critical juncture of Italian economic
history was the fruit of the efforts made by
then Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi in both
the domestic and international political arenas
and by the assistence he received by the Bank
of Italy, particularly by Luigi Einaudi and Donato
Menichella.
