Francesco Ferrara Biography

Francesco Ferrara

(Palermo, 1810-Venice, 1900) Italian economist.He studied the concept of "cost of reproduction", fundamental for the explanation of the value of a product.

He followed the classical studies together with the Jesuits and later became interested in economics.In 1835 he joined the Sicilian section of the Central Statistical Office and contributed to the appearance of the Giornale di Statistica , which gave him notoriety.At the same time he took part in political life and collaborated in the preparation of the Sicilian uprising of 1848.All his activity as a politician, economist and patriot was inspired by his principle according to which political economy represented the new phase of the desire for freedom.

After his arrest (January 1848) and the triumph of the revolutionaries, Francesco Ferrara entered the Parliament of Sicily.When the Bourbons returned, he remained in Turin, where he had gone to offer the Sicilian crown to the Duke of Genoa.There he made friends with many politicians, including Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, who requested Ferrara's collaboration in Risorgimento and La Croce di Savoia .

Appointed professor of political economy at the Turin university, he saw his classroom frequented by a select audience.In 1859, the opinions that he expressed about the freedom of education forced him to move to Pisa, whose chair he left the following year when he returned to Palermo, where, already free of Sicily, the provisional government entrusted him with the direction of indirect taxes.

In 1862 he returned to Turin, officially requested his help in the preparation of various economic measures.In 1867 he was appointed Minister of Finance and later became part of Parliament.In 1868 he obtained the position of director of the new Superior School of Commerce in Venice.

After a long hiatus, Italy had in Francesco Ferrara a renewing economist.Among his works, it is worth highlighting the posthumous Political Economy Lessons , which were published between 1934 and 1935, using lithographic sources and unpublished manuscripts.This volume completes the author's thought, already contained in the prologues to the volumes of the first and second series of the "Biblioteca dell'Economista", founded by him.

Like the economists who preceded him, Ferrara dealt with the problem of value.His research led him to complete the theory of cost of reproduction, already partly outlined by Carey.For Francesco Ferrara, this theory is affirmed as a universal principle with which all particular economic theories link: from his point of view, every economic act is reduced, basically, to an act of change.In other words: in a regime of perfect freedom, the elements that contribute to change tend to balance each other, that is, to replace each other and to put themselves in a position, albeit with different intensity, to satisfy the same need.

Nothing escapes, according to Ferrara, this law of reproduction and distribution, whether of goods or services; Some products are replaced by others, because everything is reduced, basically, to a common denominator which is precisely the cost of reproduction.A revolutionary spirit, Ferrara deserves to be remembered not only as one of the great figures of the Italian Risorgimento , but also as the sharpest and most intelligent Italian economist of the 19th century.

Comments

Hernando Tellez Biography

Hernando Téllez (Santafé de Bogotá, 1908-1966) Colombian writer and journalist.From a very young age, he showed his journalistic skills, as a contributor to the magazine Universidad directed by Germán Arciniegas, and as an assistant to Enrique Santos in El Tiempo . He was also deputy director of El Liberal and director of the magazine Semana .During the period between 1943 and 1944 he served as Colombian consul in Marseille and senator of the Republic, but he stood out above all for being one of the most complete writers of his time (he was a translator, commentator, short story writer, essayist and literary critic ). In his extensive essay work he dealt with issues of literature, society, politics and everyday life.Téllez was a poet of the essay, as well as profound; He was a great craftsman of the language, a teacher in a sober and effective handling of the language.He was a sensitive observer of daily life, an acute critic of the social and political life of the country...

Domingo Báñez Biography

Domingo Báñez (Valladolid, 1528-Medina del Campo, 1604) Spanish Dominican.He was a professor in Salamanca and confessor of Saint Teresa of Jesus (1561-1567), to whom he ordered the writing of The Way of Perfection .His views on effective grace pitted him against the Jesuit Luis de Molina.

Gene Kelly Biography

Gene Kelly (Eugene Patrick Curran Kelly; Pittsburgh, United States, 1912-Beverly Hills, id., 1996) American dancer, choreographer, actor and film director.A multifaceted and versatile talent, the image of Gene Kelly is inextricably linked to some of the legendary Hollywood musicals of the 1950s, such as Singing in the Rain , A Day in New York and An American in Paris , of which he himself signed the choreographies, and even participated as co-director in the first two.He also appeared in other musicals such as Brigadoon (1954), Las girls (1957) and Las senoritas de Rochefort (1966), and in 1956 he performed Invitation to dance .His agile and athletic style, combined with a refined classical technique, revolutionized the concept of male dance in the field of film musicals. Gene Kelly The son of Irish parents, Gene Kelly was the third of five children born to the marriage of James Patrick Kelly, a traveling salesman of gramophones, and Harriet Eckhardt.He attended the U...

Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier Biography

Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier (Auxerre, France, 1768-Paris, 1830) French engineer and mathematician.He was the son of a tailor, and was educated by the Benedictines.Positions in the Army Scientific Corps were reserved for families of recognized status, so he accepted a military professorship in mathematics. Joseph Fourier During the French Revolution he had a prominent role in his own district, and was rewarded with a candidacy for a chair at the École Polytechnique.Fourier accompanied Napoleon on his eastern expedition of 1798, and was appointed governor of Lower Egypt.Isolated from France by the British fleet, it organized the workshops that the French army had to count on for its ammunition supplies.He also contributed numerous writings on mathematics to the Egyptian Institute that Napoleon founded in Cairo. After the British victories and the capitulation of the French under General Menou in 1801, Joseph Fourier returned to France, where he was appointed prefect of the depa...

The legacy of Johannes Gutenberg

In the German city of Mainz , on the west bank of the Rhine River, an unknown character was found dead in February 1468.For a few years this indigent old man and half blind he received an assignment of clothes, grains and wine from the local governor, the same who had his headquarters on the other side of the river Rhin, in Wiesbaden .Very few people remembered who he was or what he had achieved His name was Johannes Gutenberg and he was the father of modern printing. inkart Johannes Gutenberg was born in the within a patrician family of Mainz, transforming himself into a goldsmith and a worker in metal.Later he became a member of the goldsmith's guild of Strasbourg , which was then a German city, where he began working in a No very expensive dream that haunted him: finding a method to print medieval manuscripts that were carefully handcrafted, without sacrificing their elaborate ornamental design. It was only in 1455 when Gutenberg produced his first printed book, ...

Agnes De Mille Biography

Agnes De Mille (New York, 1909- id , 1993) American dancer and choreographer.Niece of C.B.De Mille has collaborated on musical comedies and has moved away from classical ballet in favor of a more popular style ( Rodeo , 1942; A rose for Emily , 1971).She has worked as a consultant in musical comedies and has dedicated herself to recovering the American folk tradition.

Jean André Deluc Biography

Jean André Deluc (Geneva, 1727-Windsor, 1817) Swiss physicist.For years he combined his business with studies and scientific expeditions in the Alps.From 1773 until his death he was a reader of the Duchess Carlota of Mecklenburg, wife of the British monarch George III; In this second stage of his life, devoted mainly to research, he published numerous works on geology. Jean André Deluc Jean André Deluc also devoted himself to the study of meteorology and calorimetry and perfected various instruments.He also developed a theory on the variation of water vapor pressure with density and pressure, and showed that the maximum density of water is reached at 4ºC.

James A. Mirrlees Biography

James A.Mirrlees (Minnigaff, 1936) British economist.He studied at Douglas Ewart High School and Newton Stewart and entered the University of Edinburgh in 1954 to study mathematics, from which he graduated in 1957.From Scotland he left for England after his admission to Trinity College from the University of Cambridge.In this institution he continued his mathematical training, but during his stay in Cambridge there was an approach to economics that led him to do a doctorate in this discipline and which ended in 1963. When Mirrlees finished his studies in Cambridge, began collaborating with Kaldor as a research assistant on issues related to economic growth.From that position he went to the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology between 1962 and 1963, at which time he was linked to development studies in India.Upon his return to the UK, he obtained a position as Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge. He held the position unti...

Jordi Pujol Biography

Jordi Pujol (Jordi Pujol i Soley; Barcelona, 1930) Spanish politician, president of the Generalitat of Catalonia from 1980 to 2003.He studied medicine, although he did not feel a special vocation.His nationalistic and religious sentiment was already manifested in his youth, when he carried out apostolate work in the slums of his hometown; thus, he participated in the creation of the Catholic institution Catòlics Catalans. Once he finished his degree, he worked in the Fides Cuatrecases pharmaceutical laboratories, and took part in subversive incidents, such as the tram strike that took place in Barcelona in 1956, the dismissal of the president of the newspaper La Vanguardia or the incident at the Palacio de la Música in 1960, in which he interrupted a concert attended by Francisco Franco and his ministers to sing a Catalan anthem banned by the regime.He was sentenced by a court martial to seven years in prison. Jordi Pujol At the beginning of the sixties he founded with other...

Gunnar Ekelöf Biography

Gunnar Ekelöf (Stockholm, 1907-Sigtuna, 1968) Swedish poet.It received the influence of the surrealists.His books include Late arrival to life (1932), Dedication (1934) and Canto del barquero (1941).His later work is tinged with mysticism: Opus incertum (1959), A night in Otacac (1951) and The Fatumeh saga (1966).

History Today Online

Search This Blog