ABSTRACT OF PAPER

Title: Italian early macro-econometric models (1960-1970)
Author: Rancan Antonella

Since the Postwar econometrics has become one of the most important tools to test economic theories, to forecast economic trends and to simulate the effects of economic policies. Although its increasing relevance, histories of econometrics are mainly written by econometricians rather than historians of economic thought (important exceptions are represented by Boumans, De Marchi, Gilbert, Morgan). Regarding the Italian context, an historiography on the introduction, dissemination and development of econometric ideas is still absent although in the beginning of the Twentieth Century Italy enjoyed a worldwide reputation in the study of econometrics (see for example Amoroso’s, Benini’s, Gini’s, Vinci’s contributions). With the aim of partly filling this lacuna, my paper investigates how in the Postwar, especially in the Sixties, the ‘golden-age’ of large-scale econometric models, there has been a return of interest in econometrics on behalf of Italian economists. My focus is on the early macro-econometric models, in particular the Bank of Italy’s model (1964-1970) and Franco Modigliani’s collaboration, and the “Modellaccio”, developed under the guidance of Giorgio Fuà at the University of Ancona (1970-73). My aim is to study these models by placing them in the broader historical and intellectual Italian context such as the rapid economic, political and institutional changes (in particular the European integration process and the debate on economic planning), and the pluralism that characterized the Italian theoretical debate in that period, to discuss their partly different theoretical foundations and political prescriptions.

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