Reception and Scientific Dissemination of the Radcliffe Report in Italy: Contextualization and Survey of the Literature

The publication of the Radcliffe Report in 1959 gave occasion to debate innovative ideas on inflation, monetary policy and national debt management techniques. This paper investigates the dissemination of those ideas in Italy and of the Radcliffe Report in particular, which attracted the attention of many renowned Italian economists, including Federico Caffè, Ferdinando Di Fenizio and Giuseppe U. Papi. The research yields two main findings. First, The Radcliffe Report was widely disseminated in Italy. Dissemination began immediately after the Report publication and continued until the 1970s. While Radcliffe analysis of the British financial system met with general praise, opinions, expressed by Italian monetary experts, about Radcliffe policy recommendations and underlying theoretical framework underwent significant change, with initial scepticism giving way to a more favourable attitude. As our reconstruction suggests, this change of attitude reflects the influence of evolving monetary theory on the Italian scientific community as well as institutional changes.