Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Yuri Biondi
Author-Email:
Author-Workplace-Name: Université de St. Etienne 
Title: Azienda, equilibri e dinamica economica: Gino Zappa e gli «Erotemi» di Maffeo Pantaleoni
(Firm, equilibrium and dynamic economics: Gino Zappa and the last essays of Maffeo Pantaleoni)
Abstract:  In the first decades of the xx century, Pantaleoni was the leading scholar of the Italian economic
school. His dialectics with V. Pareto, especially on features and foundations of such a dynamic
approach that may overlook the static approach based on equilibrium, had a great and
valuable role in educating young economists of that time like Del Vecchio and Fanno. According
to Pantaleoni, both the accounting question of overheads allocation and the role of the
organised economic activity generated by the firm are fundamental to understand endogenous
forces leading to a dynamic, evolutionary economy.
This interpretation of the last Pantaleoni is meaningful for framing and explaining the original
development accomplished by another neglected applied economist and accounting theorist of those decades: 
Gino Zappa. Starting from Pantaleoni’s notions of «connection of
prices» and «economic complex», related to his dynamic approach, Zappa developed his
own dynamic approach to the firm, understood as a dynamic system and a lasting, evolutionary
whole. This paper proves the theoretical relationship between Pantaleoni and Zappa by
a comprehensive analysis of references and quotations made by Zappa himself to works and
articles of Pantaleoni.
This analysis further stresses some major points that distinguish Zappa from his declared 
master and lead him to his own original way to the economics of the firm. Zappa refuses the
individualist approach based on equilibrium and adopts a holistic approach based on dynamic
system. In this way, Zappa abandons the marginalist theory of distribution, essentially
static, and develops an unitary, organic, dynamic theory of the income to the firm, a special
viewpoint that, at that time, has relevant analogies with F. Perroux. From this perspective,
the accounting system becomes the mode and the language that, with limitations, can hold
on and represent the firm as an «actual economic co-ordination».
Classification-JEL: B13; B25; B31; A12
Keywords: Italian economic tradition ; accounting and economics of the firm ; theory and
history of Italian business economics ; emergence of neoclassical economics and marginalism
; emergence of institutional and evolutionary economics (Scuola economica italiana ; economia e contabilità dell’impresa ; teoria e storia
dell’Economia aziendale ; emergenza del paradigma marginalista e neoclassico ; emergenza
dell’economia istituzionalista ed evoluzionista)
Journal: Il Pensiero Economico Italiano
Pages: 179-215
Volume: 13
Issue: 2
Year: 2005
File-URL: http://www.libraweb.net/articoli.php?chiave=200506302&rivista=63
Handle: RePEc:pei:journl:v:13:y:2005:2:8:p:179-215