RIVISTA INTERNAZIONALE DI SCIENZE SOCIALI

The world is often shocked by economic, financial, environmental and health emergencies that require global responses. A holistic approach to reviewing development models is needed, one that does not give up healthy growth and avoids an unequal and unregulated capitalism. A unique and organic path can be found within the social doctrine of the Church. The encyclicals of the magisterium dealing with the social field, from Rerum Novarum to Laudato Si’, constitute a constantly updated framework capable of guiding specific choices. Many people, and not only believers, can share this teaching in search of the common good. This article identifies routes through which to reconcile inclusive economic trends with the aspirations of peoples and individuals to improve their living conditions, while safeguarding environmental balance and justice. The social doctrine sets guidelines to be followed by institutions and economic actors. Coherent business management and personal behaviours are key to changing and raising new hopes.

This paper provides a quantitative macroeconomic evaluation of the national INDUSTRIA 4.0 plan, the set of Industry 4.0 policy measures implemented by the Italian government. The evaluation is performed using the European Commission’s endogenous growth model QUEST III with R&D, adapted to Italy. Innovation of process- and skill-biased technical change characterizes the fourth industrial revolution and determines human capital formation and the spillover of knowledge accumulation. A set of model parameters and variants has been determined, and four policy scenarios are taken into account under two denominations: Innovative Investments and Skill Achievements. The Italian economy persists in its path of around zero growth, on which it has been for a while. The main results highlight a decade of weak growth, without strong innovation policy interventions, and a low profile and precarious outcomes on the labour side.

Using the concepts of category theory, we re-examine ordinalism and cardinalism. We illustrate why cardinal and ordinal assumptions constitute two levels of measurability, but other cases may exist. Finally, we suggest the notion of relative ordinalism, i.e., a weaker (less demanding) form of ordinalism in which preference orderings are not isomorphic and not description-invariant.

This paper is a discussion of a new book by Andrea Boitani entitled Le illusioni del liberismo. “Liberismo”, in the present day, is more or less synonymous with the American “neo-liberalism”. The author of the book argues that it is concerned with a hateful “market ideology” that has spread like a virus. But it turns out that his aim is more ambitious: to identify, in economic theory itself, the roots of “liberismo”. If he were right, economics itself would be included in what he calls the neo-liberal “project”. In this paper, it is argued that Boitani’s contention is based on several misunderstandings, conceptual errors (that selfishness derives from rationality) and factual errors (that economists recommend selfishness, and recommend it as enjoined by rational behaviour).