- Docente: Mauro Carboni
- Credits: 4
- SSD: SECS-P/12
- Language: Italian
- Teaching Mode: In-person learning (entirely or partially)
- Campus: Forli
- Corso: First cycle degree programme (L) in Economics and Business Management (cod. 0029)
Learning outcomes
This course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the main issues in European public finance in a broad historical perspective. Topics will include principles regulating state financial activities, formation and evolution of state financial structures, institutional innovations and the evergrowing financial needs of contemporary states.
Course contents
1. State, society and economy
Introduction: sources, historiography, issues. The origins of
modern State finance: from royal patrimony to
taxation. Institutions and institutional change. The issues of
sovereignty and consensus. The pioneering role of the Church and of
medieval city-states.
2. Early developments of pre-modern public finance
Approaches to taxation in pre-industrial Europe. Credit: early
forms of public debt. Development of public banks and
early attempts to issue paper money. The road to innovation,
three case studies: Papal States, Low Countries, Spain. Success and
failure: the English financial revolution and France financial
shortcomings.
3. Public finance and economic development in the 19th
century
Public finance in the age of laissez-faire. Conquering
money: the making of central banks. European States and financial
institutions. Expansion of State intervention: infrastructures and
education. Early forms of welfare and the expansion of public
spending.
4. War finance
Wordl War I and the making of the Warfare State. Financial woes in
the aftermath of WWI. Financial instability during the 1920s.
Economic crisis and State intervention in the 1930s.
Totalitarianism. The importance of the American New Deal.
5. The modern Welfare State
The new international financial order after World War II. Keynes and the Beveridge report. The creation of the Welfare State. Public spending, national income and fiscal policies. Differing models of Welfare State. Cracks in the system: attempts to reform the Welfare State.
Readings/Bibliography
M. Carboni, Stato e finanza pubblica dal Medioevo ad oggi. Un profilo storico, Giappichelli, Torino 2008.
D.E. Schremmer, Taxation and public finance: Britain, France, and Germany, in: The Cambridge economic history of Europe, Vol. VIII, The industrial economies: the development of economic and social policies; ed. Peter Mathias, Sidney Pollard; Cambridge, England, 1989, pp. 315-415.
Foreign and exchange students may refer to the following:
R. Bonney (ed.), Economic Systems and State Finance. Clarendon Press 1995, pp. 53-100, 123-160, 261-293, 393-538.
D.E. Schremmer, Taxation and public finance: Britain, France, and Germany, in: The Cambridge economic history of Europe, Vol. VIII, The industrial economies: the development of economic and social policies; ed. Peter Mathias, Sidney Pollard; Cambridge, England, 1989, pp. 315-415.
Handouts provided by the instructor
Assessment methods
Written exam
Students with a good attendance record may submit a written report on a topic agreed with the course lecturer (33% of the grade).
Office hours
See the website of Mauro Carboni