This course is designed to illustrate the formation and evolution of financial systems in industrialised economies by using a comparative approach looking at an extended period covering the principle events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The themes that will be studied during the course will be based around the following thematic nuclei: the role of banks in the process of industrialisation; the evolution of monetary systems from the Gold Standard to the crisis of the Bretton Woods system; the birth of the European Monetary System; growth in public spending.
The majority of classes will be dedicated to understanding the situation in Italy, with particular focus on a number of themes regarding the evolution of the banking system, the emergence of public companies and the evolution of the relationship between banks and industry from the period of Italian Unification until the recent series of privatisations in the 1990s.