BOOKS BY FERRUCCIO MARZANO

By following from a my previous contribution on Antonio De Viti De Marco’s scientific thought, in particular in Public Finance, in this Paper I dealt with his theory of money and banking. As usual, De Viti displays a complete command of the topic, both as to his time Italian and English literature and as to the structure of the Italian system of money and banking. Moreover, as I tried to show, he put forward an original view that I indicated as a "financial theory of money and credit creation".

In the paper it is underlined that, building on previous German and French literature, in various outstanding contributions Graziani analyses the working of a credit capitalist economy, that is an economy in which banks’ decisions on the amount of credit provided to firms are the starting point in the functioning of the economy. In particular, in Graziani’s vision, the power of banks and that of firms conflict each other, whereas the role of workers is a residual one.

The paper refers to the construction of some Indexes of Competitiveness and their application to the empirical analysis of the behaviour of Italian manufacturing industry in recent years. The idea is that an essential role in competitiveness is played by the specific characteristics of the goods and services concerned. With particular reference to competition between a mature economy (like Italy) and an emergent one (e.g. like China), attention is specifically directed to the behaviour of goods’ demand and supply according to their characteristics. Then, an extended Leontief Input-Output model is pursued including the impact of goods’ characteristics. At the empirical level, the role of goods’ characteristics is analysed as to the behaviour of competitiveness of Italian manufacturing products in the period from 2000 to 2008.

The Role of Ethical Premises in Economics and Finance - After having dealt with the relationship between the real economy aspects and moral "values" and "norms" in previous articles (see F. Marzano, 1992, 1998a, 2001a, 2003b, 2004), in the present paper I intend to go further in the same direction and in particular to look at the way in which ethics, economics and finance may relate each other. Hence, in the paper, I shall be concerned with the two-way relationship between economic/financial "matters" and ethical/moral values and norms. In general, I will show that any "problem" or "concern" in monetary/financial matters, as well as in economic ones, will not be "determinable" unless reference is made to (at least) one external proposition. In particular, whereas, as to the real economy problems, this is the case with reference to an externally determined distributive variable, in monetary/financial matters reference will be made to three so called zones, such as a white zone, as to which a positive judgement may always be expressed, a black zone, as to which a negative judgement may always be expressed, and a grey zone, as to which a specific judgement may only be expressed by reference to specific moral values and norms.

Open and Closed Economic Theories (by Ferruccio Marzano) - ABSTRACT: This paper proposes a new way to look at the deployment of modern economic theories, since A. Smith, as well as of actual practice as far as economic actions are concerned. On the one hand, there are those theories and actions which may be regarded as open, that is to say that they are incomplete and need to be completed on the basis of the value judgements subscribed to by each author, that are to be taken as external postulates or principles. On the other hand, there are those theories and actions which may be regarded as closed, that is to say that they are thought of as complete in themselves, so that, once certain value judgements are subscribed to by any author, there may well be the case of a clash between conclusions derived at from a reasoning which is internal to any theory and action and those conclusions that are derived at from external postulates or principles. Moreover, since any of the two groups of economic theories and actions may be combined with any of two groups of ethical postulates or principles, such as subjective vs. objective moral values, it follows that an option may be made among four different possibilities. Finally, it will be argued for the superiority of the combination open economic theories (and practice) and objective moral values over any other of the three remaining options.

The paper is a review-article of a recent textbook by M. Musella and S. D’Acunto on The Political Economy of the Non Profit Sector (Turin, 2000). The article contains a critical assessment of the main thesis of the book according to which the Non Profit Sector is seen as a productive sector with prevailing voluntary labour force and "unilateral transfers" of goods and services to people who need them. Then, the necessary resources for the financing of the productive activity and all costs of production would be derived from public funds and/or private donations. In the author’s view, though, this should be seen as only part of the story, since one cannot say that the entire world of the Non Profit Sector is to be classified on the basis of such a model. In addition, an increasing section of it is a sector with prevailing wage-earning workers and "bilateral transfers", so that goods and services may be assigned by one productive activity (or social group) to another and viceversa. Then, it seems that the Non Profit Sector may be increasingly seen as a properly "competing sector" vis-à-vis both the private (for profit) and the public sectors. JEL Classification: D64; L30