Boundaries of states are often taken as a given although they seem, in not a few instances, to be quite arbitrary. Their origins and changes through the centuries need to be examined and interpreted in order to explain why some state boundaries are frozen (often for tiny states) whilst others...

This paper introduces a book concerned with the activity carried out by the Bank of Italy in the Italian colonies during less than a century (Ercole Tuccimei, La Banca d'Italia in Africa, Collana storica della Banca d'Italia, Editori Laterza, Bari, 1999). The Author traces the history of the...

The paper deals with the adverse conditions faced by Italian banks after the first oil shock. The scene at that time was rapidly changing . The sudden increase of the cost of energy in a country almost fully dependent for its sources from abroad, caused a strong inflation and released a whole...