Andrea Bonoldi Book order

All the countries that took part in the First World War had to deal with more or less intense inflation. There were many underlying causes of this phenomenon: expansion of the money supply because of a need to finance a rapid growth in public spending; intense exploitation of production factors connected with the war economy; problems of production and transportation; and turmoil on the international commodity and capital markets. This had major consequences for the distribution of wealth, for investments and for growth, as well as repercussions on the political sphere. Of all the countries involved, two direct opponents – Austria-Hungary and successor states and the Kingdom of Italy – both during and after the conflict, had particularly severe effects of high inflation. The essays collected in this volume aim to describe and explain, in a comparative perspective, the inflationary dynamics in the two states, focusing also on the political and social effects of the phenomenon and on the measures put in place to contain it. In this way, certain points emerge that contribute to enriching the interpretative framework on the course of the conflict and on the difficulties of the post-war period, highlighting the role played by politicians, bankers, entrepreneurs and economists.

The essays collected in this volume examine the modes of action/reaction by merchants when confronted with the crises of varying nature and degree that punctuated the early modern period. By using a comparative approach, the attention is focused on the merchant firm in time of crisis, including local and international, sectorial, and more general crises relative to production, demand or credit. To this end, the experiences (successful or ruinous) of various merchant firms are compared in order to answer some key questions: what are the first signs of a crisis, and how do they reflect on the merchant's business? What role is performed by the family and the relational networks in enabling merchants to confront the crisis? What are the consequences of the crisis from both the economic point of view and the social one? What is the impact of the crisis, namely the „exogenous shock“, as opposed to mistaken management choices? Most of the cases under study concern the Alpine space, but there are also references to a French merchant involved in the transatlantic trade, and a merchant from the Venetian mainland who opened new trade relations with Sweden.