Luigi Einaudi, the Economist and the Historian

This paper presents Einaudi’s conception of economics. The paper is divided into two parts: the first explores Einaudi’s philosophical and methodological thinking, discussing his view of the role of history and what he calls “the economist’s ideals”, while the second deals with his theoretical and applied economics. The resulting profile of Einaudi as economist and economic historian confirms Schumpeter’s judgement that the Italian economist exemplified a profitable interweaving of historical and factual work that fertilized general economics without conflicting with theory.