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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the posthumous Political Economy Lessons , which were published between 1934 and 1935, using lithographic sources and unpublished manuscripts.This volume completes the author's thought, already contained in the prologues to the volumes of the first and second series of the "Biblioteca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.

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