Mario A. Maggioni

The paper looks at regional economic structure and performance of Italian regions and reviews some recent contributions focussed on the Italian “Mezzogiorno” with a specific focus on the effect of the 2008 financial crisis and the recent Pandemics (Covid-19) crisis. A comparison between Italy and the rest of the EU indicates a structural difference between the underperforming Italian economy and the rest of the Union due to the specific structure of the Italian economy in terms of sector and firm size and the consequences on strategic and organizational issues of weak small businesses and inefficient medium and large enterprises...

The paper, which acts as an introduction to the Special Issue devoted to ‘‘The whole breadth of reason’’, addresses the topic of economic rationality and discusses its strengths and weaknesses within an interdisciplinary perspective highlighting the relational dimension of agents and actions. Exiting the cage of homo economicus, we critically discuss both behavioral economics and neuro economics approaches, showing that they are not immune from limitations due to both dubious technical procedures and fragile epistemological foundations. When taking rational decision under structural uncertainty, human beings rely on default practices which are inherently developed and dynamically adapted within a community of concrete individuals; they also tend to provide persuasive justification of one’s belief to other people. The paper concludes that rationality is a powerful tool, within a relational, dynamic, realistic and ‘whole’ anthropology.