Common Welfare versus the spirit of private enterprise; the experience of Italian municipalization from 1880 to 1930

The paper investigates the Italian debate on municipalization between the 1880s and the 1920s and is divided in two parts. The first deals with the emrgence of municipalization in the late nineteenth century as a component in the birth of the Social State. The second part concerns the anlytical tools elaborated by some leading Italian economists in the first three decades of the twentieth century, with an early expanding stage (until World War I) and a later stage (under Fascism) of prevalent stagnation