State Intervention and Industrialization in Southern Italy: Pasquale Saraceno’s Contribution to Development Economics

Abstract · Pasquale Saraceno fused, in a single development model, the activity of programming public investments and the incentive system for underdeveloped southern regions with the policy of European integration and openings to inter- national trade, based on the most advanced regions of the North. The link that held these two elements together was identified by Saraceno in the industrialization pol- icy for the South. Due to his pragmatic approach and the absence of academic formalism in his writings, Saraceno was greatly underestimated as a theorist of underdevelopment, but his analytical contribution can be considered an original de- velopment of the surplus labor models, applied to the conditions of the Italian econ- omy. This paper provides an analytical reconstruction of Saraceno’s thought on the problem of Italian dualism and on the definition of economic planning policy, plac- ing his contribution in the context of the nascent development economics.