ABSTRACT
On 29 November 1920 in the faculty of law at the University of Turin, student number 7150 Piero Sraffa presented his degree dissertation: the title was L’inflazione monetaria in Italia durante e dopo la guerra and the supervisor was the professor of public finance, Luigi Einaudi. This was the conclusion to Piero Sraffa’s university education and the beginning of a brilliant career as both teacher and researcher. A career which kept Sraffa in Italy, via Perugia and Cagliari, only until 1927; clearly a short period but equally one which has been described as ‘probably decisive’.1 The intention of this chapter is to analyse that adjective ‘decisive’ which Faucci (1986) used (qualifying it by a doubt which may simply have been rhetorical) to describe the influence of Turin, and more generally Italy, on Piero Sraffa. In later years, according to Luigi Pasinetti among others, Sraffa would never speak in flattering terms of his ‘garzonato universitario’ (university apprenticeship)—to use the words of another Turin University student and close friend of Piero, Antonio Gramsci.
