Il metodo sismondiano e il ruolo dello Stato nell'economia: riflessi sul pensiero economico di Melchiorre Gioja, di Giandomenico Romagnosi e di Angelo Messedaglia (Sismondi's method and the role of the state in the economic system: consequences on the thought of Melchiorre Gioja, Giandomenico Romagnosi and Angelo Messedaglia)

In the first half of the nineteenth century, in the wake of Sismondian critics to the Ricardian methodological abstractions and his theories on the role of the State in economics, in Italy too it has been claimed some interest around the issue of the importance of statistics in the context of economic science, used initially for purely descriptive purposes and then as autonomous science, although in order to support other social sciences. According to Sismondi, theoretical constructions had to move from historically determined assumptions, so that the Ricardian conception of the State had to be changed with a setting based on the idea that the public hand had to intervene in the system in order to find the ‘fair combination’ between wealth and population, so to ensure the highest level of wellbeing for all. Starting from these observations, the paper analyzes the influence exerted by Sismondi’s thought on the epistemological basis of the Italian economists theoretical contributions involved into the debate on the role of the State in the economic affairs, through the voices of Melchiorre Gioja, Giandomenico Romagnosi and Angelo Messedaglia, recognized by the most as those scholars that more than others have distinguished themselves for having approached the examined issue with statistical method