From Smith to Ricardo, from Marx to Walras and Wicksell, from Schumpeter to Pareto and many others and above all to Keynes, perhaps the greatest of the giants of economic thought who live again in the nearly 100 audiovisual interviews of illustrious economists who speak of the legendary masters of economic science and explain the greatness and originality of their works. The series "For a History of Economic Thought" edited by the Accademia dei Lincei is a monumental and unpublished series, but also easily accessible to all due to its extraordinary clarity. Cristina Marcuzzo, designed by Renato Parascandal and presented yesterday by Bank of Italy and Rai who promoted it. A series destined to become a fundamental text for financial education but also to nourish the historical memory that gives identity to economic thought and which is already available on the Rai website at Link to the Bank of Italy Interviews - Rai Teche.
“The collection of interviews – commented the Governor of the Bank of Italy, Fabio Panetta, while presenting the series yesterday afternoon at Palazzo Koch together with the CEO of Rai, Giampaolo rossi – spans centuries of economic thought and shows how often ideas are born from the need to understand concrete problems. Perhaps it is precisely because of this concreteness that those ideas continue to speak to us, even in the era of artificial intelligence and the digital transition, which the head of Via Nazionale never loses sight of, reminding us that these are processes that must be carefully managed. Indeed, in the approximately 100 interviews conducted by Professor Marcuzzo with great expertise and equal skill in communicating, there is nothing doctrinaire but, through the voices of the authoritative economists and foreigners interviewed, an explanation of the great masters' vision of the economic problems of their time and the solutions they devised, which are often valid, at least in their method, still today. There is much to learn from listening to the interviews, and it is done in an enjoyable way.
"From the very beginning," Panetta explained, "we have worked to ensure that these interviews would emerge from the archives and speak to students, researchers, and citizens." And the Honorary Governor of the Bank of Italy is right. Ignazio Visco, who is at the origin of the project, noted that the result was "an exciting work" because it is certainly moving to hear Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen but also our own Paolo Sylos Labini, Luigi Spaventa, Giacomo Becattini, Luigi Pasinetti and many others talk about their masters and get to the heart of the problems at hand.
The series has required years and years of work and it is comforting to know – as he underlined Magda White of the Bank of Italy – which will not only become a cornerstone of financial education but will also find its natural home in Mudem, the Bank of Italy's Money Museum, which will be inaugurated in early 2027 on Via Nazionale in Rome, in front of the legendary Palazzo Koch, where the Bank of Italy is headquartered.
