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the posthumous Political Economy Lessons , which were published between 1934 and 1935, using lithographic sources and unpublished manuscripts.This volume completes the author's thought, already contained in the prologues to the volumes of the first and second series of the "Biblioteca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

Jan Hus Biography

Jan Hus (Also called John or John Huss; Husinec, Bohemia, 1369-Constance, 1415) Promoter of the Czech ecclesiastical reform.He was born into a poor peasant family in southwestern Bohemia.However, he managed to study Theology and Arts at the University of Prague and ordained himself a priest (1400).In 1402 he was appointed rector of the University, supported by the Czech particularist sentiment against Germanic domination. Jan Hus Under the influence of the English heretic John Wycliffe, Hus began in 1405 to preach against the excessive wealth of the Church and the immorality of the clergy, demanding a return to the purity of the evangelical message, preaching in the Czech language that the people could understand, and communion under both species.Its influence was increased by the crisis in which the Church of Rome was plunged by the "Schism of the West", as well as by the Czech nationalist reaction against the German minority (started with the struggle for control of ...

The Spanish Aid in the Independence of the United States

In the history of Spain, has often forgotten relevant events , perhaps because of that character that we Spaniards have in general, of not knowing or wanting to defend our own history. sinking ships that were not as was the case with The USS Maine , all in the interest of the US in Cuba. the Spanish Republican troops were the first to enter Paris, freeing her from the Nazi invasion, another unknown piece of our history.In this article we will know the importance of Spain in the Independence of the US, c omo Espana I collaborate, because it did. A part of our history that we have titled The Spanish Aid in Independence of the United States. Art Index iculo The Spanish Aid in the Independence of the United States To place ourselves in the historical context, the formation of the United States is mainly due to the so-called group of the Thirteen Colonies . These 13 colonies of British origin, had been founded during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, located ...

Gaspar Gil Polo Biography

Gaspar Gil Polo (Valencia, c .1530-Barcelona, 1584) Spanish writer.There is very little news of his life.Part of his fame as a poet is that Cervantes dedicated a royal octave to him in La Galatea (1583) and Juan de Timoneda quotes him in his Sarao de amor (1561).His fundamental work is the Diana in love (1564), continuation of the Diana by Jorge de Montemayor. Illustration of Diana in love , of Gaspar Gil Polo Born into a family of municipal officials in Valencia, Gaspar Gil Polo became a lawyer and held various administrative positions in the city.Felipe II appointed him commissioner in the principality of Catalonia, so in 1580 he moved to Barcelona.He must have been known as a poet among his contemporaries, since Juan de Timoneda quotes him in a romance of 1561, but at present only some of his loose poems are preserved. In 1564 he published in Valencia the five books of Diana in love , a pastoral novel that constitutes a continuation of Jorge de Montemayor's...

Florencio Harmodio Arosemena Biography

Florencio Harmodio Arosemena (Panama City, 1872-New York, 1945) Panamanian politician and engineer.He studied in Germany and directed important public works.A member of the Liberal Party, he was elected president in 1928 and dismissed on January 2, 1931 by the nationalist movement of Patriotic Communal Action, which brought the provisional government of Harmodio Arias to power.

Josef Willem Mengelberg Biography

Josef Willem Mengelberg (Utrecht, 1871-Zuort, 1951) Dutch conductor.He studied in his hometown with Richard Hol, Henri Wilhelm Petri and Anton Averkamp and later moved to Cologne (Germany), in whose conservatory he studied theory and counterpoint with G.Jensen, piano with I.Seiss and organ with F.W.Franke, in addition to directing and composing with Franz Wüllner. He was musical director of the Lucerne Conservatory in 1892 and years later, in 1895, he obtained the position of director of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, a position he held until 1945.He also continued directing the Museum Concerts group in Frankfurt between 1907 and 1920.From 1899 he annually conducted the Amsterdam Toonkunst Choir in its interpretation of the Passion According to Saint Matthew by JS Bach. He also conducted the American National Symphony Orchestra in New York between 1920 and 1929 and was principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra from 1921 until he left it due to differen...

Josef Svatopluk Machar Biography

Josef Svatopluk Machar (Kolín, 1864-Prague, 1942) Czech writer.He is one of the main representatives of the realist current in his country.His collections of poems Confiteor (1887) and Magdalena (1894) and the nine volumes of Through the Conscience of the Centuries (1906-1926) stand out.).

Giambattista Tiepolo Biography

Giambattista Tiepolo (Giambattista or Giovanni Battista Tiepolo; Venice, 1696-Madrid, 1770) Italian painter.He studied the works of Sebastiano Ricci, Veronese and Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, and imitated the chromaticism, with its violent chiaroscuro effects, of the latter.In his early ceiling paintings (Archinti and Dugnani palaces in Milan) he reaffirmed his decorative talent, based on architectural perspectives, trompe-l'oeil paintings and moving crowds. His first important work, the decorative cycle of the archiepiscopal palace of Udine (1727-1728), composed of biblical narratives, already denotes in the conformation of the figures (of great naturalism) and in the composition of the same contributions from the artist himself, although certain influences from Sebastiano Ricci and Veronese are still detected. Feast of Antony and Cleopatra (c.1743), by Tiepolo In Milan he worked in the Clerici Palace; in Venice he did it in the Scalzi church and in the Labia palace.The...

Jose Maria Linares Biography

José María Linares (Potosí, 1810-Valparaíso, 1861) Bolivian politician.He was Minister of the Interior and Foreign Affairs (1840-1841).He fought against Belzú, and in 1857 overthrew his successor, becoming president of the Republic.He proclaimed himself dictator (1858) and faced the power of the clergy and the army.In 1861 he was overthrown by three of his collaborators.

Clément Ader Biography

Clément Ader (Muret, 1841-Toulouse, 1925) French aeronautical engineer.Already in his childhood he designed a large kite that could lift adult men off the ground.Ader was inventive, and in his youth he made a velocipede with rubber wheels and a balloon that he built during the Franco-Prussian War and that he gave to the city of Toulouse at the end of the war. In 1876 he left his job at the Administration des Ponts et Chaussées (Ministry of Bridges and Roads), he moved to Paris and devoted himself to communications.In 1880 he collaborated in the installation of the first private telephone line in the city, using components designed by him; one of them was the Théâtrophone , with which you could listen to opera from your own home.All of this brought him great income. Ader observed the flight of numerous species of birds and bats, which he captured and kept in facilities built in his own home.His purpose was to achieve a machine with a lifting force such that it counteracts that o...

Alexandr Izvolski Biography

Alexandr Izvolski (Moscow, 1856-Paris, 1919) Russian politician and diplomat, main architect of the alliance between Russia and England in the years before the First World War. Alexandr Izvolski Educated at the Imperial Lyceum in Saint Petersburg, he soon held important diplomatic posts: he was Russian ambassador to the Vatican, Yugoslavia, Germany, Japan and Denmark.Between 1906 and 1910 he served as Minister of Foreign Affairs; after that he was appointed ambassador to France. In 1907, Izvolski signed a pact that strengthened the alliance between France and England against Germany.Thanks to this pact, the British and the Russians divided Persia, which was divided into three zones of influence: a British, a Russian and a neutral zone between the two (Afghanistan was under the protection of Great Britain).This pact, together with the Franco-Russian alliance of 1890 and the Anglo-French agreement of 1904, formed the embryo of what would later become the Triple Entente. In Oct...

History Today Online

Search This Blog