Economic Planning in the Phases of Economic History: Evidence from the Transport Sector

Starting in the 1980s, the season of economic planning in Western economies came to an end. With the affirmation of neo-liberalism, the geometric power of the market unfolded without controls and without supervision. Today we are picking up the pieces, after the repeated crises that have arisen not only in the financial economy but also in the real economy. This article retraces back the season of public planning from the second post-war period to the end of the Seventies, highlighting that this tool accompanied the season of the economic miracle and of Italian development; from the Vanoni Plan, to the Additional Note of La Malfa, from the Giolitti Plan to the Ruffolo Report, the public authorities have drawn the development trajectory of the Italian economy, together with a central role played by large public companies as an engine of growth but also as a laboratory for building the future. In the second section of this article we apply this method of reconstructing economic processes to the transport sector, to show that the end of planning is causing a series of fallouts on public choices. Institutional planning and public company planning are the two engines needed to imagine and build the organizational architectures, plans and actions that are essential to keep overall factor productivity at an adequate level.