The Italian economists in parliament from 1860 to 1922: a quantitative analysis*

The Higher Schools of Commerce (Scuole Superiori di Commercio) were of a university level. Other institutions of this kind were created in Milan (Commercial Luigi Bocconi University, a private institution founded in 1902), Rome (1905), Turin (1911) and Trieste (1918). They were subsequently transformed into Faculties of Economics. Another similar institution was the Higher School of Social Sciences (Scuola Superiore di Scienze Sociali) of Florence, established in 1875, and later transformed into a Faculty of Political Sciences.

Abstract

In the political background that prevailed in Italy after the unification of the country in 1860, many economists were attracted by the prospect of playing an active role in politics. In particular, thirty academic economists became MPs between 1860 and 1923. Many of them became ministers and three of them were appointed prime ministers. The quantitative analysis attempted in this paper reveals the professional and social characteristics of this group of economists and the importance of their political commitment. Many of them sat in parliament for more than twenty years. In both houses, they often played a technical role, concentrating their efforts in the discussion of the economic issues on the agenda. But they did not refrain from becoming involved with questions of a more direct political nature. The high number of economists who were elected deputies even after the Reform Bills of 1882 and 1911 – which gradually extended the suffrage – implies that they took part in open political contests and built up a network of patronage in their local constituencies. In particular, some indicators – like their presence in the ministries and councils of education and the role they played in the creation of institutions of research – show that they exerted their political influence to facilitate the institutionalization and professionalization of economics.

Last, some interesting generational differences are highlighted in this paper. In the period between 1861 and 1922, the relationship between political and scientific/academic reputation was inverted. Whereas the economists of the Risorgimento generation employed their political role as a means to obtain tenure in universities, those of the younger generation trained after 1876, who had received a more specialized education in economics, profited by their reputation as scientists and professors in order to foster their political ambitions.

Keywords:

• Italian economists
• parliament
• economic policy
• professionalization of economics
• economics and politics

Notes

*A preliminary draft of this paper was presented at the Seventh Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought, Université de Paris-I-Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris, 31 January – 1 February 2003. A second draft was then presented at the Seminar of the Department of Economics of the University of Pisa, 21 May 2003. The authors wish to thank José Luis Cardoso, Steve Medema and Carlo Casarosa for their useful suggestions. They are also grateful to Rosaria Adriani and Fabrizio Bientinesi for their help in the collection of data, and to Rachel Costa for linguistic revision. Usual disclaimers apply.

The Higher Schools of Commerce (Scuole Superiori di Commercio) were of a university level. Other institutions of this kind were created in Milan (Commercial Luigi Bocconi University, a private institution founded in 1902), Rome (1905), Turin (1911) and Trieste (1918). They were subsequently transformed into Faculties of Economics. Another similar institution was the Higher School of Social Sciences (Scuola Superiore di Scienze Sociali) of Florence, established in 1875, and later transformed into a Faculty of Political Sciences.

A Historical and Legal Seminar was established at the University of Pisa in 1876, and a Legal Circle was created at the University of Siena in 1880. Both had an economic section. The Institute for Practical Exercises in Political and Legal Sciences of Turin University was founded in 1881. Its ‘class’ of economics was transformed in 1893 into an autonomous Workshop of Political Economy.

Other attempts to apply a statistical methodology to single aspects of the history of economics have concerned the professional literature (Holt and Schrank 1968; Fletcher 1972; Lovell 1973; Augello 1994; Figlio 1994; Stigler and Stigler 1995), the international spread of economic ideas (Bini 1984; Magliulo 1993), and the patterns of citation practices (Quandt 1976; Stigler 1979; Steiner 1999).

The lists of professors of economics in the Higher Schools of Commerce and Agriculture are provided by the Annuari of the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Trade (1860 – 1922), which was the official authority in charge of these schools.

For a list of these thirty names with essential biographical information see Table 5.

Of these, Napoleone Colajanni, Luigi Einaudi, Antonio Graziadei, and Vincenzo Tangorra started their academic career after 1901, while Placido De Luca, Francesco Ferrara, Luigi Luzzatti, Giovanni Manna, and Antonio Scialoja had been excluded in Augello (1992) because they taught economics before 1860 or for too short a period after that date. Lastly, Paolo Boselli, Carlo Francesco Ferraris, Emilio Morpurgo and Francesco Saverio Nitti had been excluded because in the period 1860 – 1900 they taught either public finance or statistics but not political economy.

Among them, Fedele Lampertico, Marco Minghetti, Agostino Magliani, and Quintino Sella are the most outstanding.

An eminent case is that of the senator and wool manufacturer Alessandro Rossi, who became a leader of the protectionist movement in the 1870s and 80s.

Cross-examination of the research on periodical literature (Augello et al., 1996) and on the economists and political economy in Parliament (Augello and Guidi 2002, 2003) seems to exclude the presence in parliament of a fourth category, represented by journalists specialized in economic topics.

Two of the economists examined herewith – Luigi Bodio and Carlo Francesco Ferraris – belong to this category.

The figure for all the economists is 82%.

Loria and Ferraris went to Germany, while Bodio went to France. Ferraris also went to London, although he had no grant for it.

Whereas 53% of MP economists became ‘free lecturers’ against 43% for the whole category, only 10% of them went abroad against 16%.

The figure for the whole category of economists is 22%.

These figures refer to the first job after graduation. In fact, the number of economists who obtained tenure in law before tenure in economics is higher (nine, corresponding to 30%).

Leaving aside the above-mentioned ‘free lectureships’, there were two degrees of tenure, called ‘extraordinary’ and ‘ordinary’. Additionally one could be simply temporarily ‘entrusted’ with a lectureship.

The case of E. Morpurgo, who was professor of statistics at the University of Padua from 1879, is not significant, since he died in 1885 when he was only forty-nine years old.

P. Boselli attended F. Ferrara's lectures at Turin University; P. De Luca attended I. Sanfilippo's course at the University of Naples and was attended in turn some years later by S. Majorana; G. Manna and A. Scialoja attended A. Longo's courses in Naples. Additionally, A. Messedaglia and E. Morpurgo attended B.V. Zambelli's courses of Political Science at Padua University, which included a part on political economy according to the German Staatswissenschaften tradition.

The figures reported in Augello (1992: 21) are not dissimilar: 79.2% of professors of political economy graduated in law; 66.7% started by teaching economics, and 58.3% taught non-economic disciplines. The average age upon obtaining tenure was forty years. The figures concerning post-graduate training and pre-academic activities are similar.

The only exception was in fact N. Colajanni, who graduated in medicine.

Likewise in this case, the data reported in Augello (1992) are similar. However, it appears that MP economists were, so to speak, more ‘professional’ than the corresponding academic figures. Only 81.1% of the second generation and 89.5% of the third generation of academic economists as a whole graduated in law or commercial studies. MP economists were also earlier starters, from the career point of view, than their colleagues, since the average age of access to tenure, for the generality of academic economists, fell only to 38 and 30 respectively. Moreover, in the group selected by Augello (1992), those who started with economic lectureships accounted for 70.4% for the second generation and 94.7% for the third one. Additional non-economic teaching figures are 63% and 47.4%. Lastly, 11.1% of the second generation and 89.5 % of the third generation obtained a ‘free lectureship’.

Notice that, as stated in section 2, the group of MP economists examined in this paper is not a proper subset of that analysed in Augello (1992).

The legislative activities of economists and the topics they debated are extensively analysed in Augello and Guidi (eds) (2002) and (2003). The parliamentary reports analysed in these studies are listed in the section of references entitled Official papers. After extensive reflection, we discarded the idea of performing a statistical analysis of the topics examined by the economists in their parliamentary activity. Among the reasons that hinder a rigorous quantitative treatment of these data, there are the high diachronic variation of items on the parliamentary agenda, the overlapping of single questions and the variable number, length and quality of the speeches delivered by the economists. Generally speaking, our attempts at classification reveal a prevailing interest in economic issues, although many economists were also engaged in debates and initiatives of a more political nature. The most recurrent economic themes were those on which the activity of the parliament had a specific competence and which were more urgent in this period: public finance, tariffs and trade agreements, money and banking. A strong interest in the problems of labour, social insurance, poor management and inflation reveals the urgency of the so-called ‘social question’, while the proposals in favour of agricultural development and industrialization were often connected to the so-called ‘southern question’ (the underdevelopment of the Mezzogiorno). The economists' strong commitment to education confirms the important role played by this topic in the contemporary discourse on political economy, where the promotion of a modern education system was connected both to economic development and, more idiosyncratically, to the building of the Italian nation.

Another interesting fact is that three economists abandoned the university in order to devote themselves to politics.

Among them one should consider Vittorio Ellena, an economist of the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Trade who also taught for some time as ‘free lecturer’ at the University of Rome and at the Higher School of Forest Studies in Vallombrosa, near Florence, and who was an MP from 1886 to 1892 and Minister of Finance. Another ‘free lecturer’ at the University of Pavia was Arnaldo Agnelli. He sat in the House of Deputies from 1913 to 1921 and was at the head of Treasury and of the Ministry of War during the First World War. A final interesting case is that of Alberto Beneduce, who lectured in methodological statistics at the Genoa Higher School of Commerce since 1915 and was Minister of Labour and Social Insurance in 1921 – 2. This ministry had been created in 1920 and awarded to another MP economist, Arturo Labriola, who has not been included in our analysis because he was appointed Professor of Political Economy only after 1923.

Vincenzo Tangorra was the Minister of Finance of the first cabinet headed by Mussolini in 1923.

The Italian economists of the nineteenth century developed interesting analyses on the role of knowledge in economic life. See Guidi (2005).

The MP economists who were members of this council, often for long periods, were G. Boccardo, F. Ferrara, C.F. Ferraris, L. Luzzatti, S. Majorana Calatabiano, A. Messedaglia, F.S. Nitti. Among non-MP economists one should count G. Caruso, S. Cognetti de Martiis, L. Cossa, F. Protonotari. The Higher Council of Education had a special committee for university affairs, which had a strong influence on the laws and regulations concerning the university system and on the competitions for professorships.

Among MP economists, only E. Morpurgo and C.F. Ferraris sat in the Higher Council of Agriculture. However a large number of the agrarian economists of the Higher Schools of Agriculture played an active role in these bodies.

Among MP economists in this important council one should mention L. Bodio, P. Boselli, C. F. Ferraris, L. Luzzatti, E. Morpurgo, F.S. Nitti, and A. Ponsiglioni, and also the above mentioned economists V. Ellena and A. Beneduce. Among non-MP economists, mention should be made of R. Benini, L. Cossa, U. Gobbi, G. Toniolo, F. Virgilii, J. Virgilio.

L. Luzzatti and F.S. Nitti were members of this council.

L. Bodio, C.F. Ferraris and E. Morpurgo, and also V. Ellena and A. Beneduce were members of this body. A. Messedaglia and A. De Viti de Marco worked intensely together with the Directorate of Statistics.

Add to them V. Ellena, and two other influential MPs, whose reputation as economists was undisputed: Fedele Lampertico and Agostino Magliani.

L. Bodio, A. De Viti de Marco, L. Luzzatti and M. Pantaleoni among MPs, and Pasquale Jannaccone, Giovanni Lorenzoni, Giovanni Montemartini and Umberto Ricci among non-MPs.

Among them, the Bulletin de l'Institut International de Statistique (founded in 1886) hosted a lot of important statistical papers.

The figure is much more remarkable (37%) if we account also for those economists who were not academics in the relevant election years, either because they had already retired or because they obtained a professorship at a later date (see Table 2).

It seems unnecessary to make a more detailed statistical analysis of the relations between these trends, since the number of economists involved in each parliamentary period is too limited to give significant results.

Moreover, if one excludes the period of minimum presence (1890 – 1903), the average rises to 23%.

The average stay in parliament of the generation trained before 1861 was 24.4 years. The average duration of the generation trained between 1861 and 1876 was 24.5 years. By contrast, that of the third generation, i.e. those who graduated after 1876, was only 18.6 years. Similarly, the average stay of the generation that started teaching before 1876 was 24.3, and that of the post-1876 generation fell to 20.5.

The index of politicization II, obtained by the sum of these two percentages, was still 53.8.

Only two economists, A. Graziadei and V. Tangorra, were aged over thirty years when they were appointed professors.

P. Sitta was in fact appointed senator in 1924, while F.S. Nitti – along with Arturo Labriola – became an elected member of the republican senate after the Second World War.

Other disaggregations do not provide significant results. For example, the distinction between those who taught public finance and those who taught other disciplines is not significant. There is only a slight difference in the share of cabinet membership (50 against 44%) in favour of the former, compensated by a slight predominance of the latter in the economic consultative councils (25 against 21%) and in the council of statistics (19 against 14%).