Francesco Forte Research Articles

Francesco Forte: an economist across boundaries

Francesco Forte: an economist across boundaries

The Political Red Queen

In ‘The law of selection in the public economy as compared to the market economy’, Professor <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="CIT0037">Francesco Forte (1982)</xref> – contemporary doyen of theScienza delle finanzetradition – extended an invitation to consider the public economy by means of evolutionary principles of selection. Not many replied to Professor Forte’s invitation. This article is a delayed response to the invitation. Through a parallel with a metaphor from Lewis Carroll, it proposes the Political Red Queen hypothesis: politicians work to stay in power by weakening the evolutionary pressure under which they would otherwise naturally operate. A Political Red Queen exerts effort –runs, in the language of Carroll’s original Red Queen metaphor – to make policy, promulgate laws, supply public and merit goods, and so on with the prime objective to survive by reducing the uncertainty linked to maintaining a political role. A Political Red Queen thus works to weaken ‘natural’ political selection. The Political Red Queen hypothesis is shown to hold,mutatis mutandis, for both democratic and non-democratic political environments. It can be viewed as incorporating a positive public choice nexus between politics-as-exchange and politics-as-power.

Comment on ‘The European Union building from Public Choice to Ordo, Röpke’s and Einaudi’s ideas of Europe’ by Francesco Forte

In his very elaborate analysis, Forte takes on several issues regarding the European integration process, offering an original insight into the foundations of European economic governance. In particular, the author looks to expand current results in the relevant literature in several directions. On the theoretical front, Forte departs from James Buchanan’s economic theory of clubs to provide a club-theoretic template to both the European Union and European Monetary Union. He arrives at the belief of ‘the incompleteness of the European institutional construct and the misunderstandings about its basic principles’. His argument relies on the similarities that he recognises between Buchanan’s view of European federalism and the German ordoliberalism roots of the European integration process, which can be traced from the founding of the European Community onward. On the empirical front, Forte identifies a potential polarisation among countries within the euro area during the crisis that occurred over the last ten years. According to him, this dualism within the euro club is due to a ‘violation’ of the ideals and the operational suggestions proposed by Buchanan, Ordo, Röpke and Einaudi. In this comment, we briefly describe what became for most member states of the European Union the worst economic and social crisis since the Second World War that led to a new architecture of European economic governance. Subsequently, we highlight significant results presented by Forte and elaborate how these results fit into the existing literature.

The theory and practice of Public Choice: introduction to the special issue in honour of Francesco Forte

The theory and practice of Public Choice: introduction to the special issue in honour of Francesco Forte

Introduction to welfare economics

This is a revised version of Francesco Forte’s introductory lecture on welfare economics delivered in Charlottesville when he first arrived at the University of Virginia. It was then reproduced in the author’s mimeographed book “Introduction to welfare economics”, published by the Thomas Jefferson Center of the University of Virginia in 1961. In the “old welfare economics”, three fundamental approaches may be distinguished. Pareto’s “ophelimity” requires that someone is made better off and no one is made worse off. A similar problem is present both in Wicksell, by the rule of the unanimous consent of the electorate representative, and in the Italian School of Public Finance that requires an open competition aimed at assembling a majority that pursues a similar solution. Finally, Pigou’s paternalistic approach combines maximum national income with its optimal distribution. In the “new welfare economics”, the approach in terms of Pareto’s compensation principle does not generate a stable equilibrium; the social welfare function approach formalizes Pigou’s approach with the inclusion of paternalistic value judgements. The way out consists in combining Paretian ordinal choice with Wicksellian unanimity, with the Italian school’s suggestion of competition in collective choices, or with both.

Public choice as positive economics. Introduction to the special issue honoring Francesco Forte

Public choice as positive economics. Introduction to the special issue honoring Francesco Forte

Measuring the Unmeasured: Cultural Heritage Studies in Honor of Prof. Francesco Forte

This paper presents the contributions of Francesco Forte to the measurement of art and cultural goods and services, as I worked with him as his co-author. These contributions range from the valuation of art goods by the art matrix we conceived, to the valuation of the cultural welfare of nations, regions and local communities. Our work also assessed the provision of cultural welfare at the national, regional and local level for the public and non-profit sectors and measured the efficiency and effectiveness of museum bureaucracies. We also studied the profitability of investments in the arts by considering product life cycles, artistic movements and economies. More recently, with Michele Caputo, we focused on the long-run life cycle and success of the movie industry for select countries competing with foreign movie industries and TV entertainment by adopting Caputo’s fractional derivatives theory, which captures the role of past history. Professor Forte and I also developed the Differential Touristic Development Index to measure the effects of art and cultural enterprises as tourist attractions. The most innovative contributions of Francesco Forte to the measurement of the economic value of cultural goods and services demonstrate that it is possible to “measure the unmeasured,” and therein improve public collection of statistical data with the goal of increasing the preservation and valuation of cultural goods and services and highlighting their potential as economic multipliers.

Francesco Forte’s Contributions to Essentials of Fiscal Sociology

Francesco Forte has made major contributions to many areas of economics with the result that his theoretical work and applications have opened new areas of inquiry. This paper connects Forte’s work with the work of Jurgen Backhaus on fiscal sociology. Positioned at the crossroads of economics and sociology, the answers to these questions helped fill the void which gave rise to the field of fiscal sociology. Fiscal sociology is primarily a study of taxation and fiscal policies which illuminates core issues in the sociology of contemporary capitalism. It includes the causes of poverty and inequality in rich countries and adds to our understanding the basis for the inequality between rich and poor countries. Our paper reviews several of Forte’s papers on Pareto’s fiscal sociology and the failure of European planning for less-developed regions. The paper highlights Forte’s contributions to economic theory focusing on Pareto’s sociological theory and the influence of the European Union on regional development.

Understanding Social Market Economy, Francesco Forte and His Interpretation

The social thought which emerges from Francesco Forte’s economic writings proves to be mainly inspired by methodological individualism, though interpreted through a peculiar “personalistic” key. We will analyze the peculiar traits of his thought and the specific contribution that Forte gave to the understanding of a specific economic theory based on the doctrine of “Ordoliberalism” or the “Freiburg School.” In our work, we will show how Forte proposes an interpretation of that doctrine, according to two of his main points of reference in economic and philosophical thought: Luigi Einaudi and Antonio Rosmini Serbati. Finally, we will present an important aspect of Forte’s work: his institutional analysis in the light of the particular civil philosophy expressed by Christian social teaching.

Luigi Einaudi, the European Federation and the ECB’s Monetary Policy as Seen by Francesco Forte

Francesco Forte dedicated three books to the figure of Luigi Einaudi. The first was published in 1982, the second in 2009, and the third in 2016. Through these books he provides a comprehensive analysis of the liberal thought of Einaudi. This article focuses on Forte’s exploration and comments regarding Einaudi’s views and proposals for the European Federation (Einaudi 2011) and the European Central Bank’s unconventional monetary policy. Forte’s analysis of Einaudi has the merit of exalting one of the most prominent and lesser known features of his thought. Einaudi appears as the architect of what we call today the European Union. However no historian, economist, or politician has ever recognized the fundamental role of Einaudi. This lack of recognition should be extended to the Eurotower banker whose unconventional monetary policy has drawn so much from Einaudi’s theory of financial stability.

Taxation and Laffer Effects on Employment and Growth

Some dangerous short- and long-term ambiguities of fiscal policies arise from the belief that Laffer effects may be generated from deficit-financed tax cuts able to stimulate aggregate demand. However, even in a supply-side framework, fiscal illusion prevents a rational perception of the effectiveness of Laffer-oriented fiscal measures. The ambiguity of the Laffer effect led to an important series of studies of Francesco Forte, designed to disclose and empirically test its interactions with short- and long-term fiscal policies on gross domestic product (GDP) growth and on other relevant macroeconomic variables. We discuss, under the Laffer perspective, some of Francesco Forte’s studies related to fiscal policy effects on the labour market and GDP growth.

Public Debt and Monetary Stability

The plenary session consisted of four papers presented by Professors Jesus Huerta De Soto, Angelo Santagostino, Francesco Forte, and Dr. Gordon L. Brady. Professor Jesus Huerta de Soto Ballester is Professor of Political Economy at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and member of the Mont Pelerin Society. His education includes a BA in economics (1978) and PhD in economics (1992) from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Professor De Soto is a major contributor to the Austrian school of economics and for his political commentary. He has been described as:

Francesco Forte and Alan Peacock (ed.), Public Expenditure and Government Growth, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985.

Francesco Forte and Alan Peacock (ed.), Public Expenditure and Government Growth, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985.

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Advanced Econometrics. By Takeshi Amemiya Regional Economics and Policy. By Harvey Armstrog and Jim Taylor Essays in Development Economics. Volume 1: Wealth and Poverty. Volume 2: Dependence and Interdependence. By Jagdish Bhagwati Welfare Economics. By Robin Boadway and Neil Bruce The Sexual Division of Work: Conceptual Revolutions in the Social Sciences. By Shirley Dex Argentina: The Economic Crisis in the 1980s. By Bernhard Fischer, Ulrich Hiemenz and Peter Trapp. (Kieler Studien 197) Public Expenditure and Government Growth. Edited by Francesco Forte and Alan Peacock. On Monetary Causes of Real Exchange Rate Changes. By Reinhard W. Fürstenberg Money, Growth and Stability. By Frank Hahn Planning the British Economy. By Paul Hare. Innocence and Design. The Influence of Economic Ideas on Policy. By David Henderson The Economic Analysis of Unions: New Approacha and Evidence. By Barry T. Hiasch and John T. Addison. Uncertainty and the Labour Market: Recent Developments in Job Search Theorg. By C. J. McKennaOxford Review of Economic Policy: Volume 1, Issue No. 3 Work and Welfare in Economic Theory. By Ugo Pagano Multinationals and Transfer Pricing. Edited by Alan M. Rugman and Lorraine Eden The Economic Development of Modern Scotland, 1950–1980. Edited by Richard Saville The Economics of Michal Kalecki. By Matcorn C. Sawyer Cost, Use, and Value. By Francis Seton Britain and the Multinationals. By John M. Stopford and Lorn Turner Small Firms in Regional Economic Development: Britain, Ireland and the United States. Edited by D. J. Storey. Innovation and Management Control: Labour Relation at BL Cars. By Paul Willman and Graham Winch.

Reforms of Tax Systems.

Journal Article Reforms of Tax Systems Get access Reforms of Tax Systems. Edited by KARL W. ROSKAMP and FRANCESCO FORTE. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981. Pp. xii + 457. $30.00.) John A. Kay John A. Kay The Institute for Fiscal Studies Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 92, Issue 366, 1 June 1982, Pages 465–466, https://doi.org/10.2307/2232483 Published: 01 June 1982

The Independent Judiciary in an Interest-Group Perspective

The Independent Judiciary in an Interest-Group Perspective

Taxation in Colombia. World Tax Series. Harvard Law School International Program in Taxation. Prepared by George Jackson Eder, John C. Chommie, and Hector Julio Becerra (Correspondent). Chicago: Commerce Clearing House, Inc. 1964. Pp. xxxviii, 586 ($15.00 U.S.) - Taxation in Italy. World Tax Series. Harvard Law School International Program in Taxation. Prepared by Charles K. CobbJr . and Francesco Forte

Taxation in Colombia. World Tax Series. Harvard Law School International Program in Taxation. Prepared by George Jackson Eder, John C. Chommie, and Hector Julio Becerra (Correspondent). Chicago: Commerce Clearing House, Inc. 1964. Pp. xxxviii, 586 ($15.00 U.S.) - Taxation in Italy. World Tax Series. Harvard Law School International Program in Taxation. Prepared by Charles K. CobbJr . and Francesco Forte (Correspondent). Chicago: Commerce Clearing House, Inc. 1964. Pp. liv, 803 ($19.00 U.S.). - Volume 3

A Theory of Oligopoly

A Theory of Oligopoly

The Evaluation of Public Services

Next article No AccessThe Evaluation of Public ServicesFrancesco Forte and James M. BuchananFrancesco Forte Search for more articles by this author and James M. Buchanan Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Political Economy Volume 69, Number 2Apr., 1961 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/258448 Views: 7Total views on this site Citations: 10Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1961 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Silvia Fedeli Francesco Forte: an economist across boundaries, Public Choice 190, no.3-43-4 (Feb 2022): 273–280.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-022-00965-7Emanuele Ferragina, Alessandro Arrigoni Selective Neoliberalism: How Italy Went from Dualization to Liberalisation in Labour Market and Pension Reforms, New Political Economy 26, no.66 (Jan 2021): 964–984.https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2020.1865898Richard E. Wagner Entangled Political Economy Within Human Population Systems, (May 2020): 157–187.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44465-5_6Silvia Fedeli Public choice as positive economics. Introduction to the special issue honoring Francesco Forte, Public Choice 177, no.3-43-4 (Jul 2018): 189–197.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-018-0578-5Alain Marciano, Manuela Mosca Italian Influences on Buchanan’s Research Program, (Feb 2019): 1053–1078.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03080-3_46Václav Rybáček Influence of the Intermediate Goods Market on the Success of Economic Activity Forecasts, Politická ekonomie 63, no.33 (Jun 2015): 331–346.https://doi.org/10.18267/j.polek.1006Roger D. Congleton The Contractarian Constitutional Political Economy of James Buchanan, SSRN Electronic Journal (Jan 2013).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2327665David M. Levy Estimating the impact of government R&D, Economics Letters 32, no.22 (Feb 1990): 169–173.https://doi.org/10.1016/0165-1765(90)90072-9Z. A. Spindler The overstated economy: Implications of positive public economics for national accounting, Public Choice 38, no.22 (Jan 1982): 181–196.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00127719John Riew MIGRATION AND PUBLIC POLICY*, Journal of Regional Science 13, no.11 (Apr 1973): 65–76.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9787.1973.tb00378.x

The Economies of Scale

THE theory of the economies of scale is the theory of the relationship between the scale of use of a properly chosen combination of all productive services and the rate of output of the enterprise. In its broadest formulation this theory is a crucial element of the economic theory of social organization, for it underlies every question of market organization and the role (and locus) of governmental control over economic life. Let one ask himself how an economy would be organized if every economic activity were prohibitively inefficient upon alternately a small scale and a large scale, and the answer will convince him that here lies a basic element of the theory of economic organization. The theory has limped along for a century, collecting large pieces of good reasoning and small chunks of empirical evidence but never achieving scientific prosperity. A large cause of its poverty is that the central concept of the theory-the firm of optimum size-has eluded confident measurement. We have been dangerously close to denying Lincoln, for all economists have been ignorant of the optimum size of firm in almost every industry all of the time, and this ignorance has been an insurmountable barrier between us and the understanding of the forces which govern optimum size. It is almost as if one were trying to measure the nutritive values of goods without knowing whether the consumers who ate them continued to live.