Ferdinando Galiani

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Ferdinando Galiani, engraving by Lefevre after a portrait by J. Gillberg.

Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin

Ferdinando Galianiwas an Italian economist whose studies in value theory anticipated much later work.

Galiani served in Paris as secretary to the Neapolitan ambassador (1759–69). Thereafter, he performed government service in Naples, where he helped to formulate and administer economic policy.

Galiani wrote in both French and Italian, and his letters are valuable for their depiction of economic, social, and political life in 18th-century Europe. His correspondents included Denis Diderot, Voltaire, and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot. He also carried on a spirited intellectual debate with Abbé André Morellet, the spokesman of the Physiocrats.

Galiani published two treatises, Della moneta (1750; “On Money”) and Dialogues sur le commerce des blés (1770; “Dialogues on the Grain Trade”), both of which display clarity of methodological presentation, despite his basic eclecticism. In the first work, he evolved a theory of value based on utility and scarcity; this depth of thinking on economic value would not be seen again until discussions of marginal utility developed in the 1870s. Galiani’s second treatise stressed the necessity for the regulation of commerce—an argument that opposed the physiocrats, who advocated complete freedom.