Bücher von Antonio Serra

La maraviglia (come affermano li naturali), signore eccellentissimo, può esser prodotta da due cause: overo dall¿ignoranza, o che l¿intelletto apprenda una cosa per grande. E di questo ultimo modo si maravigliò alcune volte Nostro Signore; ma il primo si può dire quasi commune e generale. E, benché l¿ignoranza sia causa e principio d¿ogni male, e quanto piú vi concorra malizia tanto maggior possa dirsi ignoranza, ché per questa ragione par che gli effetti causati da quella non possano producere cosa di buono: con tutto ciò, se in ogni altro fusse vero, non è nell¿effetto della maraviglia, della quale con veritá s¿afferma che abbia di continuo causato e causi in noi grandissimo bene; poich...

Although no less an authority than Joseph A. Schumpeter proclaimed that Antonio Serra was the worlds first economist, he remains something of a dark horse of economic historiography. Nearly nothing is known about Serra except that he wrote and died in jail, and his Short Treatise is so rare that only nine original copies are known to have survived the ravages of time. What, then, can a book written nearly four centuries ago tell us about the problems we now face? Serras key insight, studying the economies of Venice and Naples, was that wealth was not the result of climate or providence but of policies to develop economic activities subject to increasing returns to scale and a large division of labour. Through a very systematic taxonomy of economic life, Serra then went on from this insight to theorize the causes of the wealth of nations and the measures through which a weak, dependent economy could achieve worldly melioration. At a time when leading economists return to biological explanations for the failure of their theories, the Short Treatise can remind us that there are elements of history which numbers and graphs cannot convey or encompass, and that there are less despondent lessons to be learned from our past. Serras remarkable tract is introduced by a lengthy and illuminating study of his historical context and legacy for the theoretical and cultural history of economics.