Riccardo Bachi: La «città assediata» come metafora dell'economia di guerra (Riccardo Bachi: the «besieged city» as a metaphor of war economy)

The Great War was the first modern mass war: more specifically, according to Einaudi, it was a war rather of industries and materials, than men, which compared industrial equipment of different belligerent countries. Also in Italy, the war economy placed the State at the center of the economic system: the theoretical construct of State «entrepreneur of war» arose exactly in this context thanks to Riccardo Bachi. Multifaceted intellectual and expert in economics and statistics, Riccardo Bachi was able to understand, in real-time, the long-term effects of the war economic system on the whole Italian industrial structure. His studies deeply explored all economic fields such as industry, agriculture, commerce and transport, together with the banking and monetary issues. The comparative statistical method together with the historical-economic approach, make the study of this economist very interesting for the scientific community particularly interested in this historical period, especially considering that he developed his investigations when the official sources to economic science were partially available