ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the multifarious relationship between fact and theories in the thought of Italian economists: a subject so vast that it can be depicted only with rapid brush strokes and brief glimmers. Everything originated from the crisis of the classical school, regarding, at the same time, economic policy, economic methodology and academia. Economic policy because English liberalism, with its mystic faith in comparative costs, was immediately suspected of being the expression of England's national interests. In Perugia, in 1971, Giuseppe Calzoni hosted the first congress of Italian historians of economic thought. Participants pertained to the most diverse schools of thought and methodological traditions. Medieval economic thought centred on theology and the thought of the eighteenth century centred on the philosophy of social welfare. Antonio Fusco underlines that the methodologic dependency and independency of economics are historical contingencies, alternatives that cyclically recur.
