Federico Caffè on the economic science in Italy

Abstract

This paper proposes a reconstruction of Federico Caffè's stance on the state of economic science in Italy. As has been observed, this subject was developed by Caffè for a project by Gustavo Del Vecchio, who called "for the study of Italian economic thought "on repeated occasions" (Caffè 1975: vii). We will conclude that, in Caffè's view, the Italian economists who took an active part in the debate on Sraffa's thought should more appropriately have relaunched the neglected ideas of the General Theory in order to overcome the «second crisis» of economic theory by means of a system of thought suitable for policy applications.