Antonio De Viti De Marco

Principii di economia finanziaria , 1934

Antonio De Viti De Marco (born September 30, 1858 in Lecce , † December 1, 1943 in Rome ) was an Italian economist and politician .

Life

After graduating in law from the University of Rome in 1881, De Viti De Marco embarked on an academic career, teaching first political economy and later public finance in Camerino , Macerata and Pavia . In 1887/88 he accepted a position as a teacher of public finance at the Faculty of Law in Rome, where he stayed until 1931. From 1901 to 1921 he was a member of the Italian Parliament with only one short break . There he tried unsuccessfully to found a liberal democratic group whose aim was to combat protectionism and the exploitation of southern Italyshould be. His anthology "30 years of political struggle" ( Un trentennio di lotte politiche ), written between 1894 and 1922, is a testimony to his political convictions. In keeping with his political ideals, he avoided the oath of allegiance to the fascist regime by giving up his university post in 1931.

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De Viti De Marcos cultural interests led him in 1890, together with a few other economists, to buy up the Giornale degli Economisti , of which he was co-editor-in-chief until 1919 at the side of Maffeo Pantaleoni , Ugo Mazzola and later Vilfredo Pareto . Under his leadership, the Giornale degli Economisti became the most recognized voice of liberal ideas in Italy. Although De Viti De Marco was not a prolific writer, he spent a great deal of time revising his own works and exerting a profound influence on the typically Italian tradition of trying to create a "pure" theory of public finance. He dedicated his first essay - "The theoretical character of finance" ( Il carattere teorico dell'economia finanziara ) - from 1888 to this special field of economic research. At the same time he was studying monetary and financial problems, about which he published an anthology in 1898 called "The function of the bank" ( La funzione della Banca ), which he revised several times before its final publication. De Viti De Marco's name, however, is primarily associated with his " Principi di Economia Finanziaria ", which was the subject of several drafts and revisions in 1923, 1928, 1934 and 1939. The final edition of this work includes a foreword by Luigi Einaudi who emphasizes the general primacy of De Viti de Marcos over other researchers in the field of public finance. This book was later translated into English and received positive feedback. Since then, De Viti de Marcos Principi have been translated into all leading foreign languages ​​and continue to represent one of the most advanced attempts to create an economic theory of the entire financial system by systematically applying the theory of marginal utility to financial problems.

The origins of De Viti De Marco's ideas can be traced back to the work of Francesco Ferrara , who saw public spending as an essential part of the discipline of public finance and recognized the productive aspect of public services. The importance of studying financial problems was foreseen in the writings of Maffeo Pantaleoni and Ugo Mazzola. Nevertheless, it was De Viti De Marco who, in 40 years of methodical work, elaborated the economic concept of public finance on the basis of two abstract types of political constitution of the state: On the one hand, a monopoly state in which a privileged oligarchy made decisions regarding the collection of taxes and the distribution of taxes Taxpayers' money meets their own interests, on the other hand, a cooperative state in which the interests of the taxpayers and those who are entitled to use state services coincide. The latter type of state was described particularly comprehensively in De Viti De Marco's work for the purpose of examining the entire financial problem, since in the cooperative state decisions and resolutions are reduced to economic calculations on an individual level and the resulting financial economy lacks any compulsive character. The precise argumentation of this assumption and its strict development can serve as an explanation for the positive international reception of De Viti's work. It also contains a criticism of the sociological approach and of those who do not recognize economic calculations on an individual level as a valid basis for collective decisions. Nonetheless, De Vitis De Marco's achievement is primarily to have created a scientific model, which has remained a point of reference and focus for the discussion of alternative ideas on the nature, causes and effects of fiscal phenomena.

Publications (selection)

• De Viti De Marco, Antonio (1885): Moneta e prezzi , Città de Castello: S. Lapi.
• De Viti De Marco, Antonio (1888): Il carattere teorico dell'economia finanziaria , Rome: Pasqualucci.
• De Viti De Marco, Antonio (1898a): Saggi di economia e di finanza , edited by the Giornale degli Economisti , Rome.
• De Viti De Marco, Antonio (1898): La funzione della Banca , Rome: Accademia dei Lincei.
• De Viti De Marco, Antonio (1930): Un trentennio di lotte politiche , Rome: Collezione Meridionale Editrice.
• De Viti De Marco, Antonio (1932): Basic tenets of finance , Tübingen: JCB Mohr.
• De Viti De Marco, Antonio (1934): La funzione della Banca , 2nd edition, Turin: Einaudi.
• De Viti De Marco, Antonio (1934): Principi di economia finanziaria , Turin: Einaudi.
• De Viti De Marco, Antonio (1934): Principios fondamentales de economia financier , Madrid Editorial Revista de Derecho Privado.
• De Viti De Marco, Antonio (1936): First Principles of Public Finance , translated by EP Marget, New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.

literature

• Buchanan, JM (1960): 'La scienza delle finanze': the Italian tradition in fiscal theory and political economy , in: J. Buchanan (Ed.), Selected Essays , Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
• Cardini, A. (1985): Antonio De Viti de Marco , Bari: Laterza.
• Ricci, U. (1946): Antonio De Viti de Marco , Studi Economici, March.
• Caffé, F. (2008): Viti De Marco, Antonio de , in: Durlauf, SN; Blume, LE (Ed.): The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics , 2nd ed., Basingstoke (UK): Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 816-817.

Web links

• Documentation about Antonio De Vito De Marco's life's work on vimeo (English)