External imbalances and the money supply. Two controversies in the English ‘Realme’ and in the Kingdom of Naples

Many scholars have noted the similarity between the controversy entered upon by Gerard Malynes, Edward Misselden, and Thomas Mun in England in the early 1620s and the debate that only few years earlier had flared up between two economists active in the Kingdom of Naples: Marc’Antonio de Santis and Antonio Serra, to whom, as I will argue in this paper, we should add Giovanni Donato Turbolo.1 However, still lacking in the literature is a systematic comparative study of the arguments that these writers developed on the common subject of their disputes, namely the causes of, as well as the remedies for, the massive specie outflows then plaguing their countries. This paper contributes to fill this gap, in the belief that such comparison may be rewarding for the following reasons.