Civil Economy

Luigino Bruni is Professor of Political Economy at LUMSA Universita, Rome. He is the author, most recently, of The Genesis and Ethos of the Market (2012) and Reciprocity, Altruism and Civil Society (2008) and co-editor (with Stefano Zamagni) of the Handbook on the Economics of Reciprocity and Social Enterprise (2013) and (with P. Porta) the Handbook of Happiness and Economics (2005). Stefano Zamagni is Professor of Economics at the University of Bologna, and Senior Adjunct Professor of International Economics and Vice Director of Italian Affairs at the School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University, Bologna. His books include An Outline of the History of Economic Thought (with Ernesto Screpanti) (2005) and Markets, Money and Capital (co-edited with Roberto Scazzieri and Amartya Sen) (2009).

Every so often, one comes across a book which tells you things you already know with such lucidity and insight that it becomes a fresh window onto the subject. Bruni and Zamagni’s work brings a persuasive freshness in their careful location of their vision for a better economy within a long-established and predominantly Italian tradition dating back to Antonio Genovesi in the eighteenth century ... in 147 pages, they have brought together one of the most effective critiques of our current economic orthodoxies, and this effectiveness stems in large part from their refusal to resort to rhetorical exaggerations or zero-sum games between competing ideas. Their critique is the more devastating for being expressed with such generosity. Bruni and Zamagni have shown here that alternatives to current economic orthodoxy do not have to be conjured up out of thin air and that there has always been, in the Italian tradition they describe, a foundation on which a better and more human economic environment could be constructed ... Civil Economy is lucid and eminently readable – detailed enough to be convincing and short enough to be widely read.

• 1. What is Civil Economy?Part I: History 2. The Cornerstones: Antonio Genovesi and Giacinto Dragonetti 3. Good Wealth: John Ruskin 4. Rents: Achille Loria 5. The “Catholic” Spirit of Capitalism: Amintore FanfaniPart II: Ideas 6. Why GDP is Not Enough 7. Common Goods 8. Towards Civil Welfare 9. Socially Responsible Companies and Consumers Epilogue