Viti de Marco, Antonio de (1858–1943)

Abstract

Italian economist and politician; born in Lecce on 30 September 1858; died in Rome on 1 December 1943. He graduated in law at the University of Rome in 1881 and embarked on an academic career, first teaching political economy and then public finance at Camerino, Macerata and Pavia. In 1887–8 he took up the post of teaching public finance in the Faculty of Law in Rome, where he remained until 1931. From 1901 until 1921, with only a brief intermission, he was a member of the Italian Parliament. He attempted unsuccessfully to found a liberal democratic group whose main aim was to fight the protectionism and exploitation of Southern Italy. The volume entitled Un trentennio di lotte politiche (1894–1922) is a testimony to his political ideas. In keeping with his political beliefs, he avoided taking the oath of allegiance to the fascist regime by giving up his university post in 1931. De Viti de Marco’s cultural interests led him, together with some other economists, to complete the purchase in 1890 of the Giornale degli Economisti, of which he was co-editor until 1919 with Maffeo Pantaleoni, Ugo Mazzola and, later on, with Vilfredo Pareto. It was in this way that the Giornale degli Economisti became the most authoritative voice of liberal Italian thinking.

This chapter was originally published in The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, 1st edition, 1987. Edited by John Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman