Il dibattito degli economisti italiani sull’impresa pubblica negli anni Sessanta del ‘900

The debate on public corporation between Italian economists in the Sixties of the 20th Century is characterized at least by four theorizations. The first is the macroeconomic one, in which public corporation is considered as an instrument of the policy of economic planning. The second is the institutional one: public corporation is seen as an economic institution which can develop the market where private enterprise fails. It can do it through the creation of different and complementary industries and a large-scale planned industrialization which doesn’t have to neglect economic efficiency. In the third approach, catholic economists see public corporation as an actor able to reinforce the market where it is not able to rise or where it is strongly inefficient. Finally, in the fourth thesis, liberal economists think that public corporation has to be managed as a private one and don’t have to be privileged by the government, not even for the development of depressed areas.