Abstract

In this contribution I propose two convergent objectives: to individualize the principal centres where the Italian economists were formed and began their job of search in the period 1950-75; to try a temporal scanning both chronological and, above all, logical of the debate of theoretical and applied economy in the same period. In the first case I underline the importance of the small universities and the extra-university centres. In the second one I distinguish among three phases: a first period in which the Italian economists dissociate themselves from the so-called "corporative" economy of the Fascism and they deepen themes typical of Keynesism; a second period in which the methodologies of the applied search are codified and Italian economists develop a lot of studies on economic trend and structural characteristics of the italian system; a third period dominated by the rise and the decline of Piero Sraffa's thought. The principal conclusion is that in the analysed period an antinomy is produced among two basic tendencies of the italian economic thought, that some authors have also individualized in other historical epochs: on one hand a sort of theoretical eclecticism moderated by pragmatism and intention to interpret reality; on the other hand a sort of abstractness (a naturalistic and positivistic approach), a sort of theoretical hypertrophy and, in some cases, a real doctrinaire intransigence.