L’economia utile. Percorsi nella via italiana allo sviluppo dall’Illuminismo al primo Novecento

[Autom. eng. transl.] Can economics be a pure science? It is a question that concerns both the method and the object of economic science, apparently resolved with the choice to endow it with foundations rigorous mathematicians. But at this point they look further questions: economics in the pursuit of analytical perfection dissolve its usefulness? Or, on the contrary, in her wanting to be one Does useful science lose rigor and systematicity? Are these some of the questions they indirectly answer Italian economists between the mid-eighteenth and early centuries Twentieth century. For the tradition of thought that goes to Pietro Verri up to Carlo Cattaneo development and civilization constitute a the only object of reflection and action. Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Vilfredo Pareto and Maffeo Pantaleoni - important promoters e protagonists of the purist turning point of the economy - they discuss the possibility of analyzing both economic and social development in the field of economic science. Their answers are different: Pareto lands in sociology; Pantaleoni believes to being able to study even very complex phenomena without move away from the economy. The question of "pure" nature or The "social" of economics as a science therefore remains controversial. In these same years a relevant component of thought Italian economy shows a clear propensity to reflect on relationship between theories and policies looking at the economy together e to society, also urged in this by the emergence of the social issue. Well before the conceptual definitions, it appears evident in these paths that the forms of intangible capital - human, social, cultural - essential for development, they find space and citizenship in contributions from those who continue to consider economics a science socially useful.