On March 27, 1985, Ezio Tarantelli, renowned and refined Italian economist, was murdered by the Red Brigades in Rome, not much after giving a lesson at “La Sapienza” University. He was a professor of political economy at the university's Faculty of Economics and Business. The murder took place while Tarantelli was heading towards his car, parked near the faculty. In that moment, two individuals they approached the professor and killed him with machine gun fire.
The absurd reasons for the attack on Tarantelli
The Red Brigades for the construction of the fighting communist party (BR-PCC) claimed responsibility for the murder with seventy page document left on his car in which they attacked him for his role as CISL consultant in the agreement on cutting of escalator shots and in structural reform of the labor market. Tarantelli proposed that wages be determined in advance in a dialogue between government and unions, rather than being indexed to growth in consumer prices, arguing that this would help reduce inflation.
Because of this the Red Brigades had launched an internal investigation on Tarantelli's activities and movements already a year before the murder. His name had been inserted into a found list in one of the criminal organization's hideouts. Even though he ended up in the sights of the Red Brigades, no escort was assigned to Tarantelli.
The culprits of the Tarantelli murder
The trials confirmed that lThe murder of Ezio Tarantelli was organized and perpetrated by members of the Red Brigades. Antonino Fosso he was sentenced to life imprisonment (after being acquitted in the first instance), while another participant still remains anonymous. Barbara Balzerani, head of the Roman BR column involved in the operation, was sentenced to two years in prison for condoning a crime.
La Skorpion submachine gun used in the murder was later found in a Red Brigade hideout in Milan in 1988. Ballistic tests revealed that the same weapon was used in other murders, including those of the former mayor of Florence Lando Conti, the Christian Democrat senator Roberto Ruffilli and the MSI militants Franco Bigonzetti and Francesco Ciavatta in the Acca Larentia massacre of 1978.
Ezio Tarantelli: career
Ezio Tarantelli was born in Rome on 11 August 1941. In 1965 he graduated from the Faculty of Economics and Commerce of the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, under the guidance of Federico Coffee, one of the main spreaders of the Keynesian doctrine in Italy. Tarantelli continued his studies by attending advanced courses in economics and quantitative methods at theUniversity of Cambridge in the UK and the MIT in the United States, where he had the opportunity to study with important economists such as Robert Solow and Franco Modigliani, with whom he began a prolific scientific collaboration.
in 1966 he began his career as an official at the research service of the Bank of Italy, collaborating with Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and managing the department from 1970 to 1973. Subsequently, he taught labor economics at the Catholic University of Milan and held various academic positions at various Italian universities, becoming full professor of Political Economy at the “La Sapienza” University of Rome.
Tarantelli was also active abroad, teaching courses at MIT, the University of California and the European University Institute in Florence. In 1981 he founded the Institute of Labor Studies and Economics, associated with the CISL, becoming its president and working closely with Pierre Carniti, then General Secretary of the CISL. From 1981 to 1983 he was also involved in the editorial staff of the magazine Political Laboratory.
Ezio Tarantelli: the works
Ezio Tarantelli was author of numerous works, including “Phillips Curve, Underdevelopment and Structural Unemployment” of 1972, written together with F. Modigliani, and “Studies in Labor Economics” of 1974. He also co-wrote “Labour Market, Income Distribution and Private Consumption ” in 1975 with F. Modigliani and “Salary and economic crisis: from the Modigliani recipe to the post-election period” in 1976 with N. Andreatta.
Other important works include “Political Economy of Labor” from 1978 and 1986, and his major writings are collected in the essays “The Utopia of the Weak is the Fear of the Strong” from 1988 and “The Strength of Ideas” from 1995.
Tarantelli's legacy
They were to Ezio Tarantelli dedicated several posthumous awards. The great hall of the Faculty of Economics of the University "La Sapienza", a student house in Rome and the library of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Calabria are named after him. A circular monument in the courtyard of the Faculty of Economics commemorates the site of his assassination. Furthermore, a square in the 11th municipality of Rome along Via Ostiense was named after him.
Il son Luca, who was only thirteen when his father was killed, has actively engaged in the reconstruction of both his father's private and public figure. He produced a documentary and a book dedicated to him, developing an original historiographical technique to preserve memory, which was also reflected in other children of victims of terrorism such as Mario Calabresi and Benedetta Tobagi.
At the beginning of the nineties the Tarantelli Foundation to commemorate Ezio Tarantelli and to promote the development of the relationship between economic theory, the macroeconomic role of the union and social inclusion.
"Tarantelli had the civil and moral solicitation and at the same time the ability to express ideas on which to base action... he was not a man inclined to raise fences but was the inexhaustible delineator of efforts at understanding which he persevered without tiredness and with firm tenacity” (Federico Caffè).
