Interpreting the path of Italian economic thought: The contribution of Eraldo Fossati

Abstract

In this article, we focus on the figure of Eraldo Fossati, He was a protagonist of the development of Italian economic thought in the central decades of the last century. At the beginning he tried to dynamize the Paretian theory of general equilibrium. In the first phase he emphasized the role of true uncertainty following the Austrian tradition. Ended a short corporatist parenthesis, after the second world war he supported the Keynesian theory and made an original proposal to reconcile Pareto and Keynes, considering the latter not as a revolutionary economist but rather as an innovator who furnished new tools to understanding the real workings of contemporary economic systems with their chronic unemployment. In fact, after the Second World War Fossati was one of the main exponents of the Keynesian turn in Italy.