ABSTRACT
Introduction I would like to express my gratitude to Heinz Kurz for having been invited to contribute to the volume in honour of a man and an economist who deserves much appreciation, Neri Salvadori.
Choosing the subject, however, has not been easy. I was tempted by various alternatives: a theoretical contribution on structural dynamics with scarce resources along my long-standing line of research; an analysis of Salvadori’s most important theoretical contributions; a consideration of some Italians that I have defined as ‘institutional economists’ who in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries contributed significantly to building an industrialized nation thanks to their broad vision and innovative implementations. I chose the last option, because the first would have been a review of my previous, well-known, works while the second would have required an effort that I cannot undertake at the moment. Moreover, the third solution is related to one of my long-standing interests in the historical roots of economic development. The analysis here proposed has two topical aspects. The first regards Italian industrial development, which 150 years after national unification, has not yet spread to the whole country. I have already devoted considerable attention to industrial and technologically-applied economics in my works.2 The second is to place, within an international setting, such as this book in honour of Neri Salvadori, the role of two eclectic personalities who marked Italian institutional and economic history during the Italian Risorgimento and the period which immediately followed the unification of Italy.
