Farewell to Gianni Toniolo, a great historian of the economy, much appreciated in Italy and internationally. But with Toniolo, in addition to the very high-ranking scholar, "a man of rare sensitivity and courtesy" is leaving, always smiling and always open to dialogue, as sadly recalled in the columns of the Sole 24 Ore by the economist Marco Onado. Toniolo was 80 years old and died following a delicate surgical operation.
Toniolo: the Bank of Italy at the center of his studies
After having been full professor of Economic Policy at Cà Foscari and of Economic History at theTor Vergata University of Rome, Toniolo was Senior Fellow at the Louis School of European Economy and Research Professor of Economics and History emeritus at Duke University.
His professional experience has largely focused on the history of Bank of Italy first with the monumental work published on the occasion of the centenary of our Central Bank and now with the first volume - dedicated to the period 1893-1943 - of the "History of the Bank of Italy. Formation and evolution of a central bank” published by Mulino with a preface by the Governor Ignazio Visco, which is actually an "extraordinary economic autobiography of the country" as Federico Fubini wrote in the Corriere della Sera just this morning.
Toniolo and the attention to the public debt and the effects on the new generations
In recent years he had concentrated his reflections on the debt and on the effects on the new generations. In a'interview given on 6 January 2018 to FIRSTonline and entitled "An anti-debt pact, if not now when", Toniolo observed bitterly: "Living with a high public debt has high costs because it slows growth, threatens the welfare state and represents a risk factor but, unlike what takes place abroad, in Italy the issue is almost ignored” by political and social forces, by commentators and economists.
Gianni Toniolo "leaves us – as Onado writes again – a very rich intellectual legacy, but this does not lessen the pain of his departure".
