INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR ECONOMIC RESEARCH

WORKING PAPER SERIES

S. Adamo

THE ITALIAN ECONOMIC MIRACLE IN COEVAL CINEMA A CASE STUDY ON THE INTELLECTUAL REACTION TO ’S SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGE

Working Paper No. 7/2013

THE ITALIAN ECONOMIC MIRACLE IN COEVAL CINEMA * A case study on the intellectual reaction to Italy’s social and economic change

Stefano Adamo‡ Banja Luka University, Banja Luka; International Centre for Economic Research (ICER)

Abstract : This essay explores the subject of the aversion of intellectuals to the market economy through a study of the Italian cinema of the early 1960s. The impact of Italy's ‘economic miracle’ on coeval cinema can hardly be overemphasized. Not only it inspired well-known art films, such as Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita and Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Eclisse , but it also played an inspirational role on the popular genre of the Commedia all'italiana , featuring as a context in ’s and as the main theme in ’s Il Boom . The films suggest that the economic boom is bringing forth a scenario dominated by ruthless predators—e.g., Alain Delon in L’Eclisse —and in which virtuous characters have no chance to survive—e.g., Lean-Louis Trintignant in Il Sorpasso . In other words, the films offer a critical view of the changing economy by showing that it favors the ascent of controversial human types who trample on traditional moral values, and dooms those who do not adapt to the new rules of the game. Comparing the realities of the economic scenario with the films under discussion reveals a clash between the existential anxieties and moral corruption that the films emphasize and the story that economic and statistical data tell us. Contrary to what is commonly thought, these films do not capture the essence of the time, but give us a partial, if not distorted, understanding of it.

JEL : P19o, Z100

Keywords : Italian economic boom; Italian cinema; Capitalism; Intellectuals and society; Public opinion; Lay comprehension of economics.

* I would like to thank Sigrid Streit, Enrico Colombatto, Carlo Testa, and the members of the 2013 ICER workshop for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

‡ Stefano Adamo, Department of Italian Studies, Faculty of Philology, Banja Luka, Bulevar vojvode Petra Bojovi ća, 1A – 78000 Banja Luka, BiH; E-mail: [email protected], Phone: +387 51-340-120. 2

The Italian ‘economic miracle’ in coeval cinema A case study on the intellectual reaction to Italy’s social and economic change 1

Introduction

In this paper, I explore a subject that has engaged several classical liberal thinkers of the recent past, namely the aversion of most intellectuals for capitalism and the market economy in Western countries after the Second World War. After briefly illustrating some of the most popular studies that have so far explored the issue, I confront their theses with the case of four Italian films released at the time of Italy’s ‘economic boom’ (roughly, 1958-1963) and thematically centered on that event. The films in question—Il Sorpasso , Il Boom , L’Eclisse , and La Dolce Vita —relate the economic growth to an alleged obliteration of moral values brought about by a new entrepreneurial class benefitting from that historical juncture. In so doing, the films transmit a sense of discomfort and suspicion against the development process per se , suggesting that little good can emerge from an economy based on entrepreneurship and a free- market order. Such a view clearly gives credit to the concern expressed by classical liberals about the aversion of intellectuals to the market economy. However, a close examination of the films suggests that the explanations attempted so far to account for the views they express need further consideration.

I begin by summarizing the main points raised in the classical liberal tradition about the relationship between intellectuals and capitalism, from Hayek to Sowell, showing its relevance to our understanding of how public opinion takes

1 Paper presented at the American Association of Italian studies conference, Eugene, OR, April 11, 2013. A previous version of this text was presented at the International Center For Economic Research fellows’ workshop, Prague, February 26, 2013.

3 shape. I then turn to the cinema climate of the post-war period, stressing how film writers and directors of that generation understood the political and ideological implications of filmmaking. After describing the representation of the economic boom that the four films convey, I conclude by showing why that representation is inaccurate and offers no support for the moral judgment suggested by the films. I argue that although the growth process did pose some real problems that could have caught the attention of a politically engaged filmmaker, the films’ criticism of the economic boom is based on a misleading representation of the Italian economy as a land of adventurers, seeking easy profits in an unregulated business environment. Of course, topical inaccuracy does in no way undermine the artistic—i.e., aesthetic—merit of these films; it shows, however, that contrary to what is commonly thought, the films do not capture the essence of the time, but give us a partial if not distorted vision of it.

Intellectuals and capitalism

For many years, since Hayek’s seminal essay on the “Intellectuals and Socialism” (1949), classical liberal philosophers and social scientists have tried to understand what led most Western intellectuals to embrace anti-market ideas. Hayek identified them as a class of professionals “who through their habitual intercourse with the printed word become carriers of new ideas outside their own fields” (Hayek 1949, 419). Therefore, the class includes journalists, teachers, ministers, lecturers, publicists, radio commentators, writers of fiction, cartoonists and artists—all of whom, says Hayek, may be masters of the technique of conveying ideas, but are usually amateurs with respect to the substance of what is conveyed. Hayek’s own view was that intellectuals, which he somewhat contemptuously qualified as “second-hand dealers in ideas,” tend to sympathize with socialist views for essentially two reasons:

4

The first is that they judge all particular issues exclusively in light of certain general ideas; the second that the characteristic errors of any age are frequently derived from some genuine truths it has discovered, and they are erroneous applications of new generalizations which have proved their value in other fields. (Hayek 1949, 423)

More specifically, Hayek’s view was that Western intellectuals gave credit to socialist ideas because (1) some key economic flaws of socialism were not immediately visible to the uninitiated—e.g., the problem of economic calculation in the absence of a market price system—and (2) because their fashioning as scientific ideas reinvigorated the old time dream of manipulating society in the same way in which scientists manipulate nature.

One further attempt to take up this line of investigation from where Hayek left off was undertaken by Mises, whose Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, released in (1956), presents a wide-ranging survey of what the author describes as a downright resentment towards capitalism on the part of various professional groups, including writers, performers, “white collars” and others. According to Mises, Western and especially American intellectuals tend to embrace anti- capitalist ideas essentially as a reaction to an alleged loss of status and privilege brought about by the advent of capitalistic mass consumption. Although the argument is articulated along the lines of a fairly uncontroversial cost-benefit analysis, the highly polemical tone of the book and the oversimplified character of his illustrations weaken Mises’s case, and raise the doubt that the book is rather intended to be a political pamphlet than a straightforward social study.

At the turn of our century, Robert Nozick (1998) and two French sociologists, Diego Ríos and Raul Magni-Berton (2003), independently tackled the problem from a similar angle. All three ascribe the anti-capitalistic feeling of most intellectuals to the different reward structures present in the market and the school system. The argument goes somewhat like this: the class of intellectuals (journalists, writers, teachers, etc.) is mainly composed of people who thrived at school. Their success in the classroom makes them feel entitled to enjoy a

5 comparable status for the rest of their professional life as well. However, school and market have different reward structures. For example, whereas market rewards are distributed “horizontally,” i.e., through the exchange mechanism, school rewards are the result of a top-down process such as grading. More importantly, whereas market is morally agnostic—in the sense that the value of production is solely given by its demand—school success depends on meeting criteria that are often underlain by moral values: doing homework requires patience and assiduity; acquiring and creatively elaborating knowledge requires humility and engagement. What these differences come down to, among other things, is that being good at school does not guarantee a high-income job 2. It should therefore not come as a surprise that those who fare well in the former might feel less at ease in the latter, the authors conclude.

Recently, Thomas Sowell (2012) has joined the debate by observing that “most intellectuals outside the field of economics show remarkably little interest in learning even the basic fundamentals of economics” (2012, 34). Sowell continues by showing that, more often than not, the animosity of many intellectuals toward the market follows from the wrong assumption that the market process reflects a zero-sum game. Sowell provides a broad (and sarcastic) survey on the many ways in which twentieth-century intellectuals have fallen short of their mission by failing to correctly identify social problems and historical trends—extolling soviet socialism for its alleged economic efficiency being one among several examples. Sowell’s central thesis, i.e., that most intellectuals fail to understand the complexity of modern economy, closely relates to the dichotomy between “what is seen and what is not seen 3.” For the most part, intellectuals are not trained to

2 Nozick remarks that this is particularly true of the verbally gifted; these are usually the classroom’s superstars, but often see their expectations of success dwindle as they enter the job market. 3 The expression refers to the title of Frederic Bastiat’s last pamphlet, published in 1850 (Bastiat 1995). What the expression means is illustrated very clearly in the opening paragraph of the book: “In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law

6 foresee the secondary (and mostly unintended) effects of economic decisions, Sowell tells us. As a result, their judgment on economic matters is mostly based on an evaluation of the intentions that inspires them rather than the outcomes they are reasonably expected to achieve.

Taken together, the views summarized above tell us at least three things. First, that the unprecedented growth in living standards enjoyed by the societies that have adopted market institutions in the last three centuries is generally not considered a sufficient vindication of the market economy. Second, that the reasons why capitalism has been—and in many ways still is—so unpopular among Western intellectuals are not completely understood. Third, and most importantly, that research based on opinion polls ought to be supplemented by an analysis of cultural productions because, as Sowell and Mises among others have shown, those are the actual loci in which the views of intellectuals are made manifest. As such, cultural productions can be regarded as nodes of an imaginary network through which ideas propagate 4.

Studying cultural productions as nodes of a network of ideas is further justified by another observation. In the field of communication studies, the fact

produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them. There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen. ” 4 Recently, several essays have been published on the cultural factors driving economic decisions (Guiso, Sapienza, and Zingales 2006; Guiso, Sapienza, and Zingales 2009; Fernández 2010; DiMaggio 1994). These studies are based on opinion polls that show how economic agents make their choices at least partly under the influence of cultural prejudices and stereotypes; these choices are then shown to be inconsistent with economic rationality. Intellectuals, however, are not economic agents in a narrow sense: their views result from a blend of observation and argumentation, and are often communicated with the purpose of informing audiences, not simply persuading them. I should mention Hayek’s own warning that “it is neither selfish interests nor evil intentions but mostly honest convictions and good intentions which determine the intellectuals’ views.” (Hayek 1949, 422).

7 that most people acquire political information while they are engaging in non- political activities has generated a new interest (Prior 2007). Following Downs (1957), this way of unintentionally acquiring information has been called: “by- product learning.” Downs presents two different scenarios to illustrate this notion. The first, involves moviegoers sitting through a newsreel before being entertained by the main feature. In Downs’ view, the audience’s learning about the latest news can be viewed as a by-product of its entertainment seeking behavior. Interestingly, the second example shows that people may acquire unsought for information not only through an external intervention (the news- reel that precedes the film), but also in the very course of their daily activities: e.g., while shopping, customers learn about price fluctuations without having to engage in costly searches for macroeconomic information (Prior 2007, 5). In Downs’ own words, the bottom line is that “accidental data are by-products of the non-political activities of a citizen; they accrue to him without any special effort on his part to find them” (quoted in Prior 2007, 5). In a remarkable concurrence of research programs, modern cultural studies have shown that an unintended learning similar to that described by Downs also occurs when people consume narratives (Gurevitch et al. 1982; Habib 2008).

Narrative is perhaps the oldest form of learning known to humans. As Galen Strawson (2004) has provocatively shown, the idea that narrative is at the basis of human learning is so pervasive in Western epistemology that it has also penetrated the fields of analytical philosophy and ethics: two traditional strongholds of paradigmatic thinking. Arguably, the modern division of intellectual labor has made narrative an even more crucial way of acquiring knowledge than it ever was, which is especially true with respect to knowledge that lies outside one’s practical or intellectual expertise.

In economics, narrative is sometimes used for rhetorical purposes, for example to make a difficult argument more accessible or persuasive (McCloskey

8

1990). However, as Hayek and Sowell have argued, economic ideas are not always entertained by the public at large in the same way as professional economists think of them. Together with the communicative power of narrative, the different ways in which economists and the public think about economic ideas leads to an important consequence that Bitetti (2012) has exemplified as follows:

When economists use concepts such as rationality, profit, cost, trade, competition, and so on, [they] are using words that embed a whole set of assumptions and results, a shared knowledge that defines the economic way of thinking. On the other hand, also common people who lack this mind-frame are exposed to this jargon in their daily life: they often use the same words, but they attach to it a different, non-technical meaning. When exposed to economic concepts, people interiorize them in an intuitive way, relating them to their non-technical knowledge and personal experience. […] Cost is a simple example: while people think in terms of monetary costs, economists think in terms of opportunity costs, and this gives rise to two different estimates of the entity. (Bitetti 2012, 3–4)

These somewhat modified versions of popularly adopted technical concepts can be described as complex mental representations, that is to say: “representations that appear clear enough to circulate widely within a population, and thus become cultural, but whose contents and implications require expert knowledge, nonetheless, in order to be fully appreciated” (Adamo 2009, 198). I propose to call a ‘lay comprehension’ of an economic idea one that is largely based on such complex mental representations. Interestingly, a lay comprehension of economics has no noticeable consequences on economic interactions. All things being equal, one does not need to master Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage in order to prefer cheap imported goods to expensive domestic ones. The information provided by the price system is all the buyer needs in order to act in accordance with the theory’s prediction. However, when popular ideas about the economy are involved, taking lay comprehension into

9 account may significantly help our understanding of the opinion formation and communication processes 5.

My working hypothesis is that opinions about issues that transcend one’s expertise depends on the way we relate the complex representations involved in the issue with real-world examples of which we have personal experience. Regarding economic affairs, this means that our opinions may emerge from the relations we establish between the delusively familiar ideas involved in the affair in question and our own interpretation of the small piece of world we see around us. For illustrative purposes, one may think of the following situation 6. A person, call her Jane, is confronted with the political issue of voting for a party that supports restrictions to free trade. The unemployment narrative is emotionally captivating and, in our times, ubiquitous: the media are filled with it; maybe someone among Jane’s acquaintances has recently lost their job, an event that would increase the narrative’s relevance to the decision Jane has to make; perhaps Jane is also sensitive to the nationalist discourse that often accompanies the topic. Of course, the economics literature contains plenty of evidence on the negative consequences of trade restrictions—e.g., reduced competition and efficiency in the supply system and the resulting damages to consumers—but that information is dispersed. Accessing that information requires some acquaintance with the field; understanding its message may necessitate special training (Krugman 1998). Moreover, the beneficial effects of free trade may not even be immediately retraceable to Jane’s daily life. Eventually, the availability of the narratives that most often accompany the free trade question may discourage Jane from further investigating the issue. Jane may be content with what she understands about free trade and willing to ignore the equally important but less perceptible aspects of it.

5 I return to this idea in the concluding remarks. A full illustration can be found in (Adamo 2009). 6 The following example is borrowed with some modifications from (Bitetti 2012).

10

The centrality of narratives in our mental life gives intellectuals, in Hayek and Nozick’s sense, a clear advantage over academics in propagating their understanding of economic issues. Intellectuals can use their storytelling skills to create vivid stories that relate with topical events and propagate their own understanding of those events. This is particularly true in cases of critical junctures that disrupt a society’s political and economic balance, because in such circumstances the public is likely to increase its demand for understanding as well as its time preference. Urgent problems require quick answers, and works of art—though admittedly not truths—often provide a meaningful and quickly digested rendition of reality. Moreover, the emotional load with which fiction is usually charged facilitates information retention. Clearly, this enhances the power of creators to influence public opinion about the topics they address.

Engaging with the audience in a critical way was considered a distinctive feature of art cinema and of the most ambitious forms of popular cinema in the Italian postwar filmmaking environment. All of this was the case during the economic boom as well.

The Italian art cinema climate during the period of the economic boom

Filmmakers occupy a prominent place in the intellectual circles of the late 1950s and 1960s. It is well known among film lovers that the post WWII era witnessed the birth and gradual affirmation of a wave of filmmakers that took cinema to a new level of expression. It may be lesser known, at least outside Italy, that the Italian Neorealism movement was among the main forces behind the new direction taken by cinema worldwide. Neorealist filmmakers believed that cinema not only deserved full status as a form of art, but could also contribute to the understanding—some would say changing—of society. According to Cesare Zavattini, a prominent figure of Neorealism, the mission of the neorealist artist

11

does not consist in bringing the audience to tears and indignation by means of transference, but, on the contrary, it consists in bringing them to reflect (and then if you will to stir up emotions and indignation) upon what they are doing and upon what others are doing; that is to think about reality precisely as it is. (Zavattini 1979, 68)

Film appears to Zavattini as the fittest means to accomplish this task precisely for the reasons stated above regarding narrative:

No other means of expression has the potential which the cinema possesses for making things known directly, for making contact immediately, to the largest number of people. (Zavattini 1979, 72)

By the time the economic boom came into view, around 1958, the Italian film world was intellectually trained to take up the challenge of closely examining the historical junction unfolding under its eyes.

Among the many films that approached the theme of the economic miracle in one way or another 7, I will focus on four movies that stand out for reasons that not only give grounds for their artistic standing, but also for their visibility as cultural artifacts and therefore vehicles of ideas. In fact, it is under the latter perspective that the present analysis is conducted. First, the chosen films represent in an equal share two of the most salient categories of the Italian cinema of that period: the internationally renowned art films and the popular Commedia all’italiana 8. Additionally, they feature four of the most influential directors of the time, all of whom had been involved in the neorealism movement at the beginning of their career. Finally, two of the selected films received either critical acclaim or a box office success; the other two were favored with both. The films in question are Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960); Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Eclisse (1962); Dino Risi’s Il Sorpasso (1962); and Vittorio De Sica’s Il Boom (1963).

7 A general discussion on this topic can be found in (Restivo 2002). 8 A comedy heavily based on social satire and characterized by the absence of a traditional happy ending.

12

Content-wise, this selection restricts the scope of my analysis to the films’ depiction of the industrial transformation of the country, its income growth, and the social change that came with it. Other films of the time have addressed different aspects of the economic boom, e.g., Southern economic underdevelopment and cultural backwardness ( Sedotta e Abbandonata , Divorzio all’Italiana ), the corruption of local administrations ( Le Mani sulla Città ), and the emergence of a peculiar suburban underworld ( Accattone , Mamma Roma ).

The films

The four films in question depict the transformed Italian society as a place in which morally controversial figures thrive and traditional figures are cast out. The films suggest that the economic boom is bringing forth a scenario dominated by ruthless predators where virtuous characters have no chance to survive—let alone thrive. In other words, the films offer a critical view of the changing economy by showing that it favors the ascent of controversial human types who trample on traditional moral values and dooms those who do not adapt to the new rules of the game. This idea is central to two of the films I discuss, Il Sorpasso and L’Eclisse , and plays an important role in La Dolce Vita and Il Boom.

Dino Risi’s Il Sorpasso is a prototypical road movie telling the story of a law student and a businessman who meet casually on the catholic holiday of August 15 th9 and embark on a road trip. The two characters, the Roman Bruno Cortona (Vittorio Gassman) and the small-town 10 boy Roberto Mariani (Jean-Louis Trintignan) could not be more dissimilar. While the former is exuberant, loud,

9 The film shows a first sign of the transformation of the country by following Bruno’s car in the empty streets of . That the city is empty in the middle of August reminds us that the country is experiencing income levels that make for mass tourism and long holidays. 10 The fact that Roberto is from Rieti, a small town north of Rome, is underscored at the beginning of the film as well as during a memorable scene featuring Roberto’s petit- bourgeois extended family.

13 frivolous, and energetic—the perfect incarnation of a few Italian stereotypes—, the latter is shy, considerate, demure, and a little bit insecure. While Roberto is a student—and a diligent one, since we see him bent over books even on a sunny holiday morning—Bruno is a swinging trader. As he himself says at one point, “I follow the current: now is the time of fridges, so I do fridges. If tomorrow the antique trade booms, I’ll shift to antiques. I’ve already done tens of jobs!” Significantly, this scene is preceded by several others that connote Bruno as cynical and superficial. At one point, he sees a business opportunity in a mortal accident and when faced with a street policeman who wants to fine him for high speed, he finds a way out by saying that he is there to assist the victims. Anyone Bruno meets along the ride can be a potential target of his loudmouth derision, whether a cyclist panting on a climb, an old peasant travelling on foot, or a family moving in a fully—and funnily—furnished truck. Later in the film, the audience learns that Bruno has a broken family. His wife treats him with contempt; his daughter hangs out with a boyfriend older than himself—an all too clear allusion to her need of a father figure. Toward the end, Roberto is captured by Bruno’s magnetism; he dismisses his wariness and adopts Bruno’s way of life. However, Roberto’s new lifestyle is short-lived since his life is about to end at a cliff as a result of Bruno’s reckless driving style. When asked by the police who the dead guy is, Bruno answers in a troubled tone: “I don’t know, I’ve only met him yesterday morning.”

Il Sorpasso can easily be interpreted as a metaphorical story of adaptation and natural selection. Bruno and Roberto incarnate two emblematic types of the newly transformed Italian society: the free-riding, easygoing, hollow urbanite; and the rule-abiding, thoughtful, unassuming small-town boy. While the literal meaning of the title, the overtaking, clearly refers to the final scene of the film, its figurative meaning easily recalls the febrile busyness of the boom’s generation incarnated by Bruno. However, as mentioned earlier, the film puts Bruno in a bad light. Bruno’s pleasantness should not be interpreted as a positive trait: it is

14 typical of the Commedia all’italiana to have the audience suspend their judgment by making villains fun and pleasant. 11 In reality, Bruno is the sole cause of Roberto’s premature death: he acts on Roberto as a corruptive figure—he is the proverbial “bad company”—and never shows any temperamental aspect that could be assimilated to a traditional virtue. Instead, the film suggests that Bruno possesses the qualities required by the times: despite all his flaws, he is the victorious figure of the film, and the audience can easily imagine him going back to his flamboyant lifestyle even as he turns his back to Roberto’s death scene.

Bruno’s relation with the new economic climate is exemplified by his behavior in business. Bruno thrives in an economy with no fixed points of reference: he switches jobs with ease; he can see a moneymaking opportunity in a road disaster; most importantly, he borrows impudently in business as well as in private life. The economy Bruno lives in is made of empty promises, bills of exchange, little bluffs, and quickly exploited opportunities. Bruno’s economic world is a volatile one, where such behaviors as planning, saving, specializing, and applying oneself seriously to a task appear obsolete. Significantly, the latter qualities characterize Roberto, the victim of the story.

This characterization of the new economic world is not an isolated one. With the addition of a general feeling of euphoria, a very similar climate is represented in Il Boom . This comedy’s main character, Giovanni Alberti (Alberto Sordi), is a small entrepreneur constantly living above his means in order to please his spoiled and onerous wife 12 . Much like what happens with Bruno Cortona, the audience follows the life of Alberto as he runs after improbable business deals,

11 As exemplified by Alberto Sordi, the most representative actor of the commedia all’italiana , the typical protagonist of this kind of films is an irresistible “bad guy” who incarnates every possible moral flaw and still gains, if not the audience’s approval, at least its connivance. Moral judgment is never explicit in the commedia all’italiana , but transpires, nonetheless, from a feeling of embarrassment that often accompanies the amusement. 12 The film clearly has a misogynous flair, a common trait of many Italian comedies.

15 grapples with debts, and strives to become a wealthy and influential businessman in one fell swoop through public relations. The movie is a carousel of parties, dancing, and bottle uncorking. Yet the screenplay reserves a surprise. At the end of a tongue in cheek situation in which a very rich mature woman seems to suggest Giovanni that she would be willing to pay in order to have sexual intercourse with him, Giovanni realizes that what the woman is actually aiming at is one of his eyes. Eventually, Giovanni will sell his right eye to the woman’s husband who had lost his eye in a work accident a long time ago. Giovanni will spend the remainder of his life as a successful one-eyed businessman.

Significantly, the movie contrasts the figure of Giovanni Alberti with that of Carlo Bausetti, the older and affluent industrialist who buys Giovanni’s eye. While the former appears rush, naive, and with no specific skills or professional background, the latter appears prudent, wise, and industrious: a man whose status reflects a lifelong dedication to business. Moreover, whereas Alberto deals in finance, Carlo Bausetti deals in construction, a nod towards the “real” economy as opposed to volatile finance. The final message of the movie is transparent: the economic boom is a bubble, and its enthusiasts will sooner or later have to change their minds.

With Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Eclisse , the mood becomes more somber. As a long sequence in the stock exchange shows, the financial world is central to this movie not only because one of the two main characters is a stock broker, but also because finance appears in the film as the epitome of the modern booming economy that is changing the country. However, the film is also about a love story, despite what the centrality of financial capitalism might suggest. More precisely, it is about an unrealized love story between two characters, Piero (Alain Delon) and Vittoria (Monica Vitti), who seem incapable of having an authentic emotional life. The film does not reveal why Piero and Vittoria are incapable of loving. Regarding Vittoria, the audience is only shown that she has recently come

16 out of a presumably important affair with another partner, and is not yet ready to engage in a new relationship. As for Piero, he appears completely immersed into his job as stockbroker, which is repeatedly depicted in accordance with the usual stereotype of market dealers having “animal spirits.” Though little is known about these two characters, the film provides plenty of symbolic clues to account for their behavior—as typical of Antonioni’s style. An unreal atmosphere reminding of Giorgio de Chirico’s metaphysical paintings surrounds Piero and Vittoria. The scenes alternate between moments of unrealistic silence and sudden bursts of sound and noise—a mechanism also at work in the opening credits. The overall impression is that the world of Piero and Vittoria is uncanny and full of contrasts. A parodic balcony scene, in which Piero and Vittoria finally seem to get close to flirting, is spoiled by the presence of a drunken man who shortly later kills himself using Piero’s car. Piero’s reaction to the event is limited to a concern about the costs of fixing the car. In short, the world that surrounds Vittoria and Piero is senseless, and so appears the heart of its economic system: the stock exchange. After following a man who has just lost millions from the stock exchange to a nearby café, Vittoria sees Piero and asks him where the money goes when the market crashes. Piero’s hermetic reply—a shrug of the shoulders— communicates the idea that the modern economy is essentially based on gambling, which furthers the sense of loss and dismay that the character of Vittoria expresses. Similarly to Il Sorpasso , L’Eclisse is a film that contrasts the behavior of two different characters caught in an unprecedented historical juncture. Piero is enthusiastically integrated into the new reality, but his questionable behavior makes him also appear as a symptom of social malaise. In this respect, Piero is very similar to Il Sorpasso ’s Bruno: a character with dubious morals and therefore perfectly fit for the times. Vittoria is clearly at the opposite end: she is given the task of conveying to the audience the feeling of anxiety that the movie transmits. She is a victim of the new world and may remind viewers of

17

Il Sorpasso ’s Roberto . The famous apocalyptic final sequence of L’Eclisse can be interpreted as the way Vittoria sees the world.

La Dolce Vita addresses the economic boom from a different angle. Explicit economic themes are absent from the film. However, the extravagant settings in which the story takes place, and the decadent disposition of most of its characters, inevitably elicit a reflection on the way in which economic growth has transformed certain strata of society. Fellini’s attitude towards the world he depicts is never judgmental. Nonetheless, La Dolce Vita, too, presents the now familiar contrast between those who blend with the new reality and those who are left behind. Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni) is a tabloid journalist who hunts for stories in show business and high society. Although the movie does not feature a traditional plot, the sequence of seven episodes of which the film consists leads to Marcello’s transformation into a member of the picturesque environment which he initially only observes. As such, Marcello’s story is a parody of the age-long tradition of the soul’s path to virtue and heaven, and can easily be seen as the ideal plot of the film. One of the characters with which Marcello interacts is Mr. Steiner (Alain Cuny), an intellectual whose life is destined to a brutal end. Mr. Steiner is characterized as a sensitive and reflexive person, much like Roberto and Vittoria, who acts as a role model for Marcello. Not surprisingly, his words reveal a feeling of rejection of the modern way of life. In Steiner’s own words: “A more miserable life is better, believe me, than an existence protected by an organized society where everything is calculated, everything is perfect.” Steiner dies in one of the film’s last scenes by shooting himself after having killed his two young children. In the ensuing episode, Marcello appears as a different man: he is transformed into the exact opposite of the kind of person he formerly aspired to be. Once again, the audience is faced with a story of integration and exclusion in which the excluded character incarnates virtue and the integrated one incarnates vice.

18

What aspect of the economic miracle do these films capture? What idea is the audience expected to form about it? How does the idea of a moral loss connect with the economic transformation at the center of these stories?

A look at the Italian economy of the time

In order to answer these questions I first need to provide a look at data that illuminates what was happening in the Italian economy at the time. From 1950 to 1961, the Italian GDP increased at an average annual rate of 6 percent—a total growth of 89 percent. Private consumption had increased at an annual rate of 4.9 percent and investments had annually increased at 9.3 percent (La Malfa 1962, 21–23). After the creation of the European Economic Community, in particular, figures boost: within the newly created European market alone, exports grew by 438% and imports by 307% between 1958 and 1966. At the time Italy entered the EEC, in 1957, it had a trade deficit of 378 million Dollars; eight years later, that figure was reversed into a 347 million Dollars surplus (Mazzini 2006, 31). The extraordinary growth of those years can be more fully appreciated by looking at the production increase of some industries, for example that of electric appliances. As Paul Ginsborg notes:

In 1947 Candy produced one washing-machine per day, Ignis had a few dozen workers and even Zanussi had only 250 employees on its books. In 1951 Italy was producing just 18,500 fridges. By 1957 this number had already grown to 370,000; by 1967 it had reached 3,200,000, by which time Italy was the third largest produce of fridges in the world, after the and . By the same date Italy had also become the largest producer in Europe of washing-machines and dishwashers; Candy was now producing one washing- machine every fifteen seconds. (Ginsborg 2003, 215)

What all of this comes down to is that a generation of saw their income almost double and their living standards change radically within a few short years. As the table below shows, if growth is measured starting from pre- war levels, Italy in 1965 presents the greatest progress among the major European economies.

19

GRO SS D OMESTIC P RO DUCT IN THE L ARG EST E URO PEAN E CO NOMIE S (1936-1965; c ons tant pr ices)

Years IT ALY GERM ANY FRA NCE UNIT ED K IN GDOM

Index Percentage Index Percentage Index Percentage Index Percentage 1938=100 change 1938=100 change 1938=100 change 1938=100 change

1936 92,9 0,2 87,6 10,5 94,9 3,8 95,5 4,5 1937 99,3 6,8 92,8 6,0 100,4 5,8 98,8 3,5 1938 100,0 0,7 100,0 7,7 100,0 -0,4 100,0 1,2 1939 107,3 7,3 109,4 9,4 107,2 7,2 101,0 1,0 1940 107,9 0,6 110,2 0,7 88,4 -17,5 111,1 10,0 1941 106,6 -1,2 117,2 6,3 69,9 -20,9 121,2 9,1 1942 105,3 -1,2 118,8 1,3 62,7 -10,4 124,2 2,5 1943 95,4 -9,4 121,1 2,0 59,5 -5,0 126,9 2,2 1944 77,5 -18,8 124,2 2,6 50,3 -15,5 122,0 -3,9 1945 60,7 -21,7 88,3 -28,9 54,5 8,4 116,6 -4,4 1946 79,5 31,0 52,5 -40,6 82,9 52,1 111,5 -4,3 1947 93,4 17,5 58,9 12,3 89,8 8,4 109,9 -1,5 1948 98,7 5,7 69,8 18,4 96,4 7,3 113,4 3,2 1949 106,0 7,4 81,3 16,5 109,5 13,6 117,6 3,7 1950 114,6 8,1 97,1 19,4 117,7 7,5 121,4 3,2 1951 123,2 7,5 106,6 9,8 124,9 6,2 125,0 3,0 1952 132,4 7,5 116,5 9,2 128,2 2,7 124,8 -0,2 1953 141,9 7,2 126,7 8,8 131,9 2,9 129,7 3,9 1954 149,3 5,2 136,5 7,7 138,3 4,9 134,9 4,1 1955 158,0 5,8 152,9 12,0 146,3 5,7 139,8 3,6 1956 165,1 4,5 164,5 7,6 153,7 5,1 141,6 1,2 1957 174,9 5,9 174,2 5,9 162,9 6,0 143,8 1,6 1958 184,2 5,3 181,8 4,3 167,0 2,5 143,5 -0,2 1959 195,7 6,2 195,9 7,8 171,8 2,9 149,4 4,0 1960 206,3 5,4 212,9 8,7 183,9 7,0 158,0 5,8 1961 223,7 8,4 222,5 4,5 194,0 5,5 163,2 3,3 1962 241,1 7,8 232,7 4,6 206,9 6,7 164,8 1,0 1963 258,3 7,1 239,2 2,8 218,0 5,4 171,2 3,8 1964 268,4 3,9 255,1 6,7 232,2 6,5 180,2 5,3 1965 274,4 2,2 268,8 5,4 243,3 4,8 184,9 2,6 SOURCE: A. Maddison, Monitoring the World Economy, OECD, Paris 1995.

Such numbers make the sense of euphoria depicted in the films clearly understandable. However, aggregate data conceal part of the story. Development did not occur evenly across the peninsula. While the Northwestern regions took the lion-share of the industrialization process, Southern regions, despite some growth, lagged behind. If we exclude the Southern regions from the aggregate computation, the growth rate of the industrialized part of the country appears even more impressive; but this also means that the economic miracle did not transpire without issues. The most visible one was certainly the change of the

20

Northern urban landscape brought about by immigration of unskilled labor from the South. For one, low to medium-income Italians, though living in a unified nation for a hundredth years, were still used to spend most of their lives within the boundaries of their original community. In some extreme cases, people from different regions would not even be able to communicate in a common language 13 . For Northern cities, the increase of Southern unskilled laborers resulted not only in a density level that local administrations were unprepared to address, but also in an unprecedented series of class, social, and cultural frictions (Crainz 1996, 110–115; Castronovo 2006a, 436). The fact that the country’s growth was essentially export-led means that salaries did not increase in relation to productivity at least until the mid 1960s (Zamagni 2003, 430; Castronovo 2006b, 62). Moreover, when demand became capable of absorbing part of the production, what the industry could offer was a plethora of manufacturing goods, but still little in terms of what makes for a fully developed country, such as efficient and accessible healthcare and education services, and a research and development infrastructure. As Ginsborg writes:

Export-led growth meant an emphasis on private consumer goods, often of a luxury nature, without any corresponding development in public consumption. School, hospitals, public transport, low-cost housing, all items of prime necessity lagged far behind the startling advance in the production of private consumer goods. […] the pattern which the boom assumed emphasized individual and familial roads to prosperity while ignoring collective and public responses to everyday needs. (Ginsborg 2003, 291–292)

In short, Italians were certainly consuming more than ever before, but their overall welfare still had much room for improvement. In particular, the newly reached income levels needed to be sustained in the long run by investing in education and technological development, a problem of which many contemporary observers were long aware. For example, economist and life

13 This however was already in the process of changing in the 1960s, thanks to the advent of television broadcasting.

21 senator Pasquale Jannaccone had expressed it as early as in 1950 when he wrote on the daily “La Stampa:”

Raising and educating of a generation of young highly skilled people in a healthy and civilized environment can give a safer and more immediate return than creating timber tree woods or building huge aqueducts. (Jannaccone 1956, 230)

At the height of the boom years, in a now famous memorandum delivered to the Parliament as budget minister, Ugo La Malfa remarked that

Income improvements do not always come with a better quality of life, because the latter requires not only “more” consumption but also of the “best” kind. […] The data that government intervention should address are the following: the scarce propensity of households to invest in education; the structure of payments and incentives, in terms of income and social status, which at present favors the rush for quick moneymaking and discourage investments in a serious professional and general education; the scarcity of funds devolved to scientific research and education. (La Malfa 1962, 39–41) 14

In other words, what Italy needed was more growth, and an allocation strategy that would make for a lasting and inclusive development (Papi 1962, 35; Carli 1977, 10–13).

In retrospect, most historians would agree that Italy did not develop as hoped. Major industries, e.g., the automotive, chemical, and steel sectors, concentrated in the hands of a few large groups assisted in the form of what is today commonly called ‘crony capitalism.’ Fiscal and legal reforms of the post-boom era constrained the expansion of small and medium businesses; at the same time, a series of protections, such as import restrictions and—from the 1970s— competitive currency devaluation, discouraged efforts to innovate or increase productivity. Southern underdevelopment was tackled by means of massive transfers, which in most cases cemented political patronage instead of promoting development. Jannaccone’s intuition was far sighted: some decades later, Italian media coined the expression ‘cathedral in the desert’ to refer to subsidized

14 See also (La Malfa 1962, 32 et seq.) for an articulated analysis of those years’ growth and the problems it raised.

22 factories built in materially underdeveloped and institutionally weak areas. Of course, their owners would soon abandon those unprofitable ‘cathedrals,’ leaving those areas to their destiny. Gradually, a large part of the Italian society acquired a rent-seeking behavior whose long-term effects are making today’s news 15 .

Discussion

The films surveyed above captured the growth in living standards that the country was experiencing and left aside its imbalances. They focused, instead, on the growth model per se, developing a moral reflection on capitalistic development. For example, the prominence of finance and credit in L’Eclisse and Il Boom , was probably encouraged by the news concerning Italy’s exposure to stock market fluctuations—a relatively new and alarming phenomenon for the Italian public of the time (di Fenizio 1960, 16; Papi 1962, 31). One such period of instability occurred in the summer of 1960. Economist Ferdinando di Fenizio, who commented on economic events for the daily “La Stampa,” among others, wrote a series of open editorials in which he argued that although little could be said about how those fluctuations would affect the general trend of stock returns, there was not much to be worried about either. What happened, di Fenizio

15 Concerns about the present state of the Italian economy have been expressed in a large number of venues, from blogs to academic journals, and the debate is still ongoing. Early warning signs of the present situation were already visible in the mid 1980s. As Paul Ginsborg noticed at that time: “The Italian public-sector deficit has continued to grow throughout the 1980s and successive governments have been able to do little or nothing to bring it under control. By 1985 the Italian public debt had reached 84.6 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product, compared to 69.4 per cent in Japan, 53.7 per cent in Britain and 48.5 per cent in the United States. Since then, the Italian situation has worsened, so much so that by the end of 1989 the public debt is expected to exceed GDP for the first time. Ancient ills have combined with new needs: historic inefficiency and waste in the public sector has joined with much increased spending on welfare, especially on health provision, to produce a spiraling deficit. Any long-term continuation of Italy’s economic renaissance is threatened by this enormous debt” (Ginsborg 2003, 409). A good synthesis of Italy’s present social and economic problems can be found in Girlfriend in a Coma , a documentary film by journalists Annalisa Piras and Bill Emmott, released as late as February 2013 (Piras 2013).

23 explains, was that an international juncture had provoked an unexpected influx of “hot money” into the Italian market, which had triggered a reaction from the Central Bank to prevent sudden flights of capital (di Fenizio 1960, 29). The banks responded by increasing their dollar and convertible currency accounts to repay short-term debts without creating further liquidity. The purchasing power of the Lira was not compromised, and the country’s growth rate for that year, though lower than the previous one, was still above 5 percent. Of course, the increasing interaction of the Italian economy with those of countries in and outside Europe, as a result of revoking a number of trade restrictions, meant that stock markets could temporarily become unstable (di Fenizio, 1960, p. 31).

What in the real world was business as usual, in the films under discussion appears as a sign of chaos. The temperament of the main characters of the films suggests that a new generation of unscrupulous hedonists and profit seekers are taking advantage of the historical juncture and supplanting time-honored values such as thrift, diligence, and sobriety. The idea of adaptation by rejection of traditional moral values that emerges from the films, in conjunction with the sense of chaos that they emanate, clearly transmits a critical view about the market forces behind Italy’s development. The films seem to warn us that an economy that rewards egoism and unscrupulousness is doomed to failure. Complex transformations in the country’s economic life, such as the rise of first- generation entrepreneurship (Castagnoli 2006), are interpreted in terms of a traditional narrative pattern according to which social status comes at the expense of morals. In particular, the individualistic foundation of the emerging economic order is put in relation to the moral vice of egoism.

Contrary to the classical liberal theses about the socialist leanings of Western intellectuals 16 —and in spite of the socialist inspiration of the neorealist current— the anti-capitalistic bias of these films does not necessarily serve the idea of

16 See p. 3.

24 socialism, but rather conveys a more generic anti-modern feeling. For sure, in a country politically polarized between two great parties—one of which being the Communist Party—a negative depiction of the market economy and its underlying institutions might have driven consensus toward the latter. However, the criticism of the free-market implied by these films is inspired by a traditionalist worldview rather than a socialist one. Wariness of modernity, as expressed by such characters as Steiner ( La Dolce Vita ) or Vittoria ( L’Eclisse ), is not a feature of socialism, which instead defines itself as a progressive ideology; similarly, the positive connotation of such characters as Roberto Mariani ( Il Sorpasso ) and Carlo Bausetti ( Il Boom ) derives from temperamental traits, such as prudence, thrift, austerity, commitment, and work ethic, that not only are common to many ethical traditions, but are also particularly relevant to the bourgeois stereotype.

Do these films accurately depict the country’s economic reality? Contemporary economic data and successive historical reconstructions tell us they do not. With few exceptions, the Italian economy has never been friendly toward freeriding newcomers, such as the protagonists of Il Sorpasso and Il Boom . That the economic boom was driven by the private sector and “emphasized individual and familial roads to prosperity,” as Ginsborg put it 17 , should not be taken to imply that the Italian economy was deregulated, or that its factor and product markets were perfectly open to competition. On the contrary, Italy’s economy was largely based on small and medium family businesses mostly operating within industrial districts whose age-old tradition of regional and corporatist cooperation served, among other things, as a protection from outside competitors. Large firms were often family based, too, but also connected with government in a significant way. State-owned companies, such as ENI, were massive, and played a crucial role both in business and in the political sphere. In

17 See p. 20.

25 fact, the Italian economy was a mixed economy, which in the decades following the boom would witness a heavy regulation of factor markets. Finally, the heavily politicized and conflicting relationship between labor and capital clearly did not make things any easier for national entrepreneurship. Whenever a number of new entries were registered in the manufacturing sector (Castagnoli 2006, 77– 80), they were mostly spin-offs of existing firms, and despite their innovations, they could hardly be said to foster anything like creative destruction 18 .

Clearly, these films cannot be regarded as documents of that period’s reality, as it is often done. Although, the economic reality of the time offered several cues for a critical discussion, the films do not directly address them. What they do, instead, is to interpret the economic boom within the framework of an anti- modern narrative, making way for a critical stance that appears misaddressed for at least two reasons. On the one hand, the authors engage in a hunt for downsides to what today is mostly remembered as a unique combination of entrepreneurial spirit and self-denying work ethic ever to appear in a single generation of Italians—a juncture whose positive outcomes are impossible to underestimate 19 .

18 As Toniolo remarks: “Endogenous innovation was growing too slowly at a time [mid 1960s] when the advantages of backwardness, typically unlimited supply of labor and imported technology, began to fade” (2013, 23). For a complete account of the Italian economic growth since unification, see (Vecchi 2011). Specific aspects of the boom years can be found in (Castronovo 2006a, 401–473; Zamagni 2003, 430–482; Cardini 2006; Crainz 1996). A first-hand literary account of the dynamism of Italian manufacturing sector until the 1980s can be found in the Strega Prize winning novel Storia della mia gente (Nesi 2010). 19 To summarize some of the numerous ways in which the standard of living of most Italians improved during those years, following (Vecchi 2011), Toniolo writes: “If aggregate caloric intake was already adequate, the daily diet became more diversified and, what matters most, malnutrition was almost eradicated and absolute poverty radically reduced. Houses became larger and healthier, with universal access to sanitation and the rapid diffusion of central hating. […] the small Fiat 500 and 600 crowned the ordinary person’s dream of private transportation. The progressive improvement in the public provision of health services and retirement pensions together with longer-term job opportunities lowered workers vulnerability to poverty. Income distribution became steadily more egalitarian. The North-South income gap narrowed for the first and only time since unification” (Toniolo 2013, 23).

26

On the other hand, they focus on mourning the loss of traditional customs and values instead of exploring new ways of giving sense, however critically, to the emerging economic reality. Rossi and Toniolo have pointed out that

The economic problems of the following decades had largely non-economic causes. Most of them can ultimately be traced back to a less than satisfactory adjustment of Italian society to the economic reality created by largely unanticipated rapid growth. Institutions, politics, public administration, unions of employers and employees, and ideologies remained to some extent those of an underdeveloped economy.” (Rossi and Toniolo 1996, 444)

If the cultural and institutional development of modern societies depends in part on the work of intellectuals, this quotation tells us that propounders of such views as expressed in the films—a much larger group than the few filmmakers involved in the present discussion—bear their share of responsibility for the social and economic maladjustment in the aftermath of the boom.

On a final note, I would like to address the question of how does the idea of a moral loss connect with the economic boom 20 . Certainly, the tradition that links wealth with evil, and capitalism with greed, is long and firmly ingrained in Western culture. There are, however, a few suggestions I would like to make that are, I think, specific to the case under scrutiny. The working hypothesis behind this paper is based on the notion of “complex representation,” that is to say a representation that appears clear enough to circulate widely and become cultural, but whose technical meaning and implications are hidden from the view of non- experts. When people consider issues that transcend their expertise, they are likely to relate the complex representations involved in the debate with general ideas and real-world facts that may be relevant to the debated issue under some interpretation. These interpretive processes may generate a feeling of comprehension of the debated issue that conceals one’s lack of equally relevant,

20 The question is introduced on page 18. These final remarks are based on the cultural- cognitive hypothesis briefly illustrated at the beginning of this essay and more fully developed elsewhere. I am returning to it here as an attempt to follow the development of an idea to see where it might lead.

27 but less accessible, knowledge; when everything holds together, further questioning seems unnecessary. At a social level, this lay comprehension of complex representations would favor the retention and communication of the ideas related to those representations, making them culturally ‘sticky’ (Adamo 2009).

In the discussion conducted so far, three ‘complex representations’ stand out: finance ( L’Eclisse , Il Boom ), entrepreneurship ( L’Eclisse , Il Boom , Il Sorpasso ), and individualism (Il Sorpasso , L’Eclisse , Il Boom, La Dolce Vita ). The films exploit these three ideas, among others, in order to convey the feelings of wariness and discomfort with the emerging economic reality shown above. Arguably, certain aspects of the Italian economy of the time could easily be related with a non-sophisticated understanding of finance, entrepreneurship, and the individualistic basis of the market. For example, the dependence of Italian manufacturing on raw materials imports and final goods exports exposed the economy to financial events to an extent unimaginable to the previous generation, making finance a salient concern for the general public (see p. 22). Entrepreneurship is another case in point. Though not characterized by creative destruction, entrepreneurship did acquire visibility in the Italian society of the time. The question is: did the average Italian hold the notion of entrepreneur theorized by such economists as Schumpeter or Knight? Hardly. The notorious cronyism of the Italian industrial world and a popular historiography relating capitalism with fascism would not easily allow for the diffusion of a conception of entrepreneurship associated with the ideas of wealth, innovation, and growth. Finally, it should not surprise that in a country where the most popular social theories were the Marxist and the Catholic, the market economy was widely believed to nurture people’s worst self-serving instincts. This idea was not only

28 backed by an age-old tradition that is still alive 21 , but also easily reflected in the Italian reality: in a mixed economy where politics played a primary and often corruptive role, wages were relatively low, and social mobility rare. In such a context, examples of spontaneous order, wealth creation, self-fulfillment, and other social benefits of the market economy must have been difficult to detect for the average person, including many intellectuals in the Hayekian sense.

The problem raised by the classical liberal thinkers discussed at the beginning of this essay may ultimately reside in the lay comprehension of complex representations. This is somewhat similar to what Hayek believed, except that he seems to have missed the importance of real-world impressions. Further refining and testing of this hypothesis requires a contribution from other disciplines, such as cognitive psychology or behavioral economics. I welcome any collaborative proposals in this direction.

Refrences

Adamo, Stefano. 2009. “On the Social Diffusion of Sophisticated Ideas.” The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences 3 (10): 193–200. Bastiat, Frédéric. 1995. “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen.” In Selected Essays on Political Economy . Library of Economics and Liberty. http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html. Bitetti, R. (2012). Economics of Failure in Movies after the Big Crisis. Conference presentation, The Bruno leoni Seminar, Sestri Levante. Retrieved from http://www.brunoleonimedia.it/public/Mises2012/Papers/Mises2012-Paper-Bitetti.pdf Cardini, Antonio, ed. 2006. Il miracolo economico italiano, 1958-1963 . Bologna: Il Mulino. Carli, Guido. 1977. Intervista sul capitalismo italiano . Edited by Eugenio Scalfari. Roma-Bari: Laterza.

21 Examples are countless. Perhaps the latest significant work in the Anglophone world is (Skidelsky and Skidelsky 2012); as for Italy, one may mention Massimo Fini’s Il denaro sterco del demonio (1998), which has gone through several reprints.

29

Castagnoli, Adriana. 2006. “Piccoli e grandi imprenditori.” In Il miracolo economico italiano, 1958-1963 , edited by Antonio Cardini, 69–85. Bologna: Il Mulino. Castronovo, Valerio. 2006a. Storia economica d’Italia: dall’Ottocento ai giorni nostri . Torino: Einaudi. ———. 2006b. “Il ruolo della grande industria.” In Il miracolo economico italiano, 1958- 1963 , edited by Antonio Cardini, 59–67. Bologna: Il Mulino. Crainz, Guido. 1996. Storia del miracolo italiano: culture, identità, trasformazioni fra anni cinquanta e sessanta . Roma: Donzelli. Di Fenizio, F. (1960). Moneta, banche e borse in Italia durante il 1960 . Milano: Editrice “L’industria.” DiMaggio, Paul. 1994. “Culture and Economy.” In The Handbook of Economic Sociology , edited by Neil J. Smelser and Richard Swedberg, 27–57. Princeton, New York: Princeton University Press. Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy . New York: Harper. Fernández, Raquel. 2010. “Does Culture Matter?” Cambridge, Mass: National Bureau of Economic Research. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/657621911. Fini, Massimo. 1998. Il denaro «Sterco del demonio» . Marsilio. Ginsborg, Paul. 2003. A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943- 1988 . Palgrave Macmillan. Guiso, Luigi, Paola Sapienza, and Luigi Zingales. 2006. Does Culture Affect Economic Outcomes? Cambridge, Mass: National Bureau of Economic Research. ———. 2009. “Cultural Biases in Economic Exchange?” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 124 (3): 1095–1131. Gurevitch, Michael, Tony Bennett, James Curran, and Janet Woollacott, ed. 1982. Culture, Society, and the Media . London: Methuen. Habib, Rafey. 2008. Modern Literary Criticism and Theory . A History. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Hayek, F. A. (1949). The Intellectuals and Socialism. The University of Chicago Law Review , 16 (3), 417. Jannaccone, Pasquale. 1956. “Pareggio Del Bilancio e Investimenti Pubblici, ‘La Nuova Stampa’, 25.05.1950.” In Scritti e Discorsi Opportuni e Importuni (1947-1955) , 228– 231. Torino: Einaudi. Krugman, Paul. 1998. “Ricardo’s Difficult Idea: Why Intellectuals Don’t Understand Comparative Advantage.” In Freedom and Trade: The Economics and Politics of International Trade , edited by Gary Cook, 2:22–36. La Malfa, Ugo. 1962. “Problemi e Prospettive Dello Sviluppo Economico Italiano”. Nota al Parlamento presentata dal Ministro del bilancio. Roma: Ministero del bilancio. Mazzini, Jacopo. 2006. “I dati della crescita.” In Il miracolo economico italiano, 1958- 1963 , edited by Antonio Cardini, 27–45. Bologna: Il Mulino.

30

McCloskey, Deirdre N. 1990. If You’re so Smart: The Narrative of Economic Expertise . Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nesi, Edoardo. 2010. Storia della mia gente . Milano: Bompiani. Nozick, Robert. 1998. “Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?” Libertarianism.org . January 1. http://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/why-do-intellectuals- oppose-capitalism. Papi, Giuseppe Ugo. 1962. Programmazione Indicativa . Università Di Messina, Facoltà Di Economia e Commercio, Istituto Di Scienze Economiche 3. Milano: Giuffrè. Piras, Annalisa. 2013. Girlfriend in a Coma . Documentary. http://girlfriendinacoma.eu/watch/. Prior, Markus. 2007. Post-broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increases Inequality in Political Involvement and Polarizes Elections . New York: Cambridge University Press. Restivo, Angelo. 2002. The Cinema of Economic Miracles: Visuality and Modernization in the Italian Art Film . Duke University Press. Ríos, D., & Magni-Berton, R. (2003). La misère des intellectuels: pourquoi s’opposent- ils au capitalisme? Paris: l’Harmattan. Rossi, Nicola, and Gianni Toniolo. 1996. “Italy.” In Economic Growth in Europe Since 1945 , edited by Nicholas Crafts and Gianni Toniolo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Skidelsky, Robert, and Edward Skidelsky. 2012. How Much Is Enough? Money and the Good Life . New York: Other Press. Sowell, Thomas. 2012. Intellectuals and Society: Revised and Expanded Edition . New York: Basic Books. Strawson, G. (2004). Against Narrativity. Ratio , 17 (4), 428–452. Toniolo, Gianni. 2013. “An Overview of Italy’s Economic Growth.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Italian Economy Since Unification , 3–36. New York: Oxford University Press. Vecchi, Giovanni. 2011. In ricchezza e in povertà: il benessere degli italiani dall’unità a oggi . Bologna: Il Mulino. Von Mises, Ludwig. 1956. The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality . London: Macmillan. http://mises.org/document/1164/The-AntiCapitalistic-Mentality. Zamagni, Vera. 2003. Dalla periferia al centro: La seconda rinascita economica dell’Italia (1861-1990) . Bologna: Il Mulino. Zavattini, C. (1979). A Thesis on Neorealism. In D. Overbey (Ed. & Trans.), Springtime in Italy: A Reader on Neorealism . Hamden, CT.: Archon Books.