PREFACE
This collection of essays provides a tribute to Alessandro Roncaglia, one of the most important representatives of what has come to be a threatened species: the classical political economist.
His work has provided insight into the joint journey of economic theory with economic history and its application to economic policy related to both the past and the present problems of an evolving economy.
While economic history serves the classical economist as insight into the diverse theoretical development underpinning of economic policy debates, the focus is always on the objective of understanding the economy in which he/she lives and works. The classical economist is thus bound to think that economic theory is “historically conditioned” (Sylos Labini, 2005): as social systems evolve, the appropriate theory to represent a certain phenomenon must evolve too. Therefore, plurality in methods, including history of economic thought, must be a deliberate choice.
As Salvatore Biasco stresses in his contribution to this volume,
At the base of a nonmainstream way of looking at the economy, from a descriptive and normative perspective, cannot be but social complexity, uncertainty and innovative dynamics. Through these lenses, the aggregate behaviour of the economy is studied as determined by constantly evolving endogenous events, which are fed by a number of driving forces: unstable and potentially explosive relationships; nondeterministic developments; a financial system closely interconnected to the real economy but also able to acquire an autonomous dimension; and a social dynamic that changes in parallel to the whole process and that at the same time affects it.
These contributions in honor of Roncaglia’s work follow in this tradition, dealing with themes that have characterized his work or that represent expressions of his personality, his interests and method.
Geoffrey Harcourt, Heinz Kurz, Nerio Naldi and Neri Salvadori all deal with one of Roncaglia’s major contributions to classical economics, that is, the presentation, interpretation and extension of Piero Sraffa’s work on the classical theory of prices. Marcella Corsi, Carlo D’Ippoliti, Peter Groenewegen, Cosimo Perrotta, Alfonso Sanchez and Gianni Vaggi all provide essays reflecting the great legacy of classical economists and the interpretation of their work, a permanent source of inspiration for Roncaglia. Jan Kregel, Michele Salvati and Mario Tonveronachi provide an integration of the work of the classics with the more modern contributions to this tradition in the work of John Maynard Keynes, Hyman Minsky and Josef Steindl, economists who also provided inspiration for Roncaglia’s work on economic policy. Other contributions deal with topics of great relevance for Roncaglia (e.g., the oil market) while the macroeconomic picture of the impact of austerity measures given by Davide Antonioli and Paolo Pini is much in line with Roncaglia’s view of economists not “as servants or as princes” but as citizens, socially and politically engaged, as any citizen should be (Roncaglia, 2017).It is our hope that these essays will incite an interest in Alessandro Roncaglia’s life work and a revival of interest in classical political economy.
Marcella Corsi, Jan Kregel and Carlo D'Ippoliti
References
Roncaglia, A. 2017. “The Economist as an Expert: A Prince, a Servant or a Citizen?” In Experts on Trial: A Symposium. New York: Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET). Available at: https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/research-papers/experts-on-trial-a-symposium.
Sylos Labini, P. 2005. “Storia e teoria economica: due casi degni di riflessione,” Rivista di Storia Economica 21:181-89.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are grateful to Elizabeth Dunn and Iolanda Sanfilippo for their editorial advice and support. A special thank is due to Agnese Marcigliano for her help in drafting the book cover. The usual disclaimers apply