Abstract

This article historicizes the role played by the Bank of Italy during the 1980s. In particular, it explores the strategies and policies that the Bank of Italy promoted within the wider framework of European integration and the transformations that occurred in the international economic and monetary system at that time. This contribution covers a time frame that spans from 1979 to 1992, and sheds new light on the close interdependence between the domestic and international factors that contributed to frame the Bank of Italy’s aims and attitudes in those years. Furthermore, this paper discusses how social and political concerns impacted on the central bank’s strong anti-inflationary turn that started in 1979-1981, as well as how European integration embodied the institutional and – to some extent – conceptual framework that underpinned the strategies and the practices of the Italian central bank during the 1980s. Finally, this article discusses whether and how the Bank of Italy achieved its purposes as the Cold War ended and the EEC morphed into the current European Union