Le carte di Corbino nell'Archivio Storico della Banca d'Italia (Epicarmo Corbino's papers at the historical archives of the Bank of Italy)

The Historical Archives of the Bank of Italy (asbi) maintain a number of Corbino’s papers and corrspondences. They do not form an archival fund or a series on their own, as they are discontinuous and not numerous. Nevertheless, they enable us to reconstruct some historical events and interesting aspects of the related debates on economic policy. Moreover, they illustrate new details concerning the intellectual and political relationships between Corbino and some of the most important politicians and economists of his age, such as Luigi Einaudi, Alcide De Gasperi, Ferruccio Parri, Giorgio Amendola, his direct or indirect interlocutors in the correspondences that we found. This article takes into account two groups of papers, both dealing with the work relationship between Corbino and Einaudi. The first one dates back to December 1945, when Corbino was the Treasury minister in the first De Gasperi’s Government, and Einaudi was the governor of the Bank of Italy. It illustrates their views about the opportunity of granting iri (the Institute of Industrial Reconstruction) a loan of 1 billion liras. Some differences between the two men’s approaches to social policy and the intervention of the Sate in the economy emerge from this correspondence. The second group of papers reveals the little known involvement of both Corbino and Einaudi in the defence of Italian interests in the B Zone of Venezia Giulia, then ruled by the Jugoslav autorities, and illustrates their views on what we may call a ‘monetary circuit’ between the Italian and the Jugoslav economy.