De Cesare, Carlo (1824-1882)

Encyclopaedia of the social sciences, editor in chief Edwin R.A. Seligman, New York, The Macmillan Company, vol. V, 1931, pp. 44-45

DE CESARE, CARLO (1824-82), Italian economist. De Cesare occupied a number of important posts in the Neapolitan and central Italian governments. He was a member of the first and second Italian parliaments and was made senator for life in 1876. His most important appointment was to the position of controller of credit institutions and other joint stock companies for the central government in July, 1866. During his tenure of office De Cesare published two reports, Il sindacato governativo, le società commerciali e gli istituti di credito nel Regno d’Italia (2 vols., Florence 1867-69), which are among the best sources for the history of credit, cooperation, joint stock companies and speculation in a fateful period of Italian economic history. De Cesare is merciless in exposing the sins of promoters and untrustworthy or careless directors, and the discontinuance of the central controllership in September, 1869, was probably due to his ruthless supervision. He defended the idea of a central bank against unlimited freedom of issue in a tract, Le banche di emissione (Rome 1874), which derives value from his official experience. De Cesare also wrote a textbook on political economy (Manuale di economia pubblica, 2 vols., Turin 1862), an essay on the economics of his native region, Intorno alla ricchezza pugliese (Bari 1853), and a biography of Antonio Scialoja (La vita, i tempi e le opere di Antonio Scialoja, Rome 1879). He ranged himself with Scialoja and the moderate interventionists in their warm disputes in the sixties and seventies with Ferrara and other adversaries of the intervention of the state in economic affairs.