Abstract

In the history of Italy, Iri ("Istituto per la ricostruzione industriale") has played an important role in terms of unification of the economy and of economic policy. After the phase between the 1950s and the early 1970s, when the Institute provided a fundamental contribution to the country's modernization and was a decisive instrument of State intervention in the economy, over the next two decades, coinciding with the decline of the Fordist and Keynesian system and with the explosion of public debt, Iri went through a phase of increasing difficulty. Burdened by the Finsider investments and the crisis of the Italian steel industry, in 1979-1982 Iri ended up losing nearly 20 trillion lire, all while the employees working in its companies swelled to the highest number ever: an untenable situation, which was to lead to a drastic reduction of employees as part of the State's growing disengagement in the area of industrial production and the economy in general.