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OBITUARY -- GIOVANNI CARAVALE 
(by Sergio Nistico) 
 
Giovanni Caravale was born in Rome on August 18, 1935, and died 
unexpectedly on May 29, 1997 from a cerebral edema.  His death leaves a 
void in his family circle and in the Faculty of Political Sciences of the 
University of Rome "La Sapienza," where hundreds of students had the 
opportunity of attending his superb lectures and all were welcome to 
benefit from his stimulating presence in his department office.  He is 
survived by his children Giorgio and Benedetta, his wife Lucia, and his 
brother Mario with his family. 
 
Professor Caravale took a law degree in 1957.  His qualifying graduation 
thesis was in the field of economics on the question of consumer credit.  
In 1960, this thesis became a book (Il Credito al Consumo, Torino:UTET).  
His inclination for the economics profession was increased  by his stay in 
1960 and 1961 as visiting student at Trinity College of Cambridge 
University, where he studied with Maurice Dobb, Piero Sraffa, Nicholas 
Kaldor and other great economists.  He joined the technical staff of the 
Italian Senate in 1958 and from 1965 to 1972 held the post of Secretary to 
Permanent Committee for Finance and Treasury and for Industry and Foreign 
Trade. In 1963 he was awarded the Italian "free professorship" and started 
to teach economics and fiscal policy at the University of Pescara.    
 
On the academic front, Caravale's interests started to move towards more 
theoretical subjects, and from 1968 to 1971 he lectured on political 
economy at the University of Perugia.  In 1972, he was awarded a full 
professorship and decided to abandon the Senate to become a full-time 
Professor of Political Economy at that university.  In 1979 he moved to 
the post he held until his death, his professorship at the University of 
Rome "La Sapienza." From January 1995 to June 1996 he was Minister of 
Transportation and Navigation in the cabinet of Prime Minister Lamberto 
Dini. 
 
Professor Caravale's scientific contributions can be divided into groups 
corresponding to four phases in the development of his research work. 
Until the first half of the 'seventies',  his intellectual efforts were 
mainly devoted to the formulation of a comprehensive scheme for the joint 
interpretation of fluctuations and long-term growth in which oligopoly 
plays a major role.  The main results of this first research program were 
the publications, Cicli Economici e Trend (Giuffre' , Roma 1961), 
Fluttuazioni e Sviluppo nella Dinamica di Squilibrio (ISCONA, Roma 1969) 
and Oligopolio Differenziato e Processo di Sviluppo (Bulzoni, Roma 1973). 
 
The "rational reconstruction" of David Ricardo's theory of value and 
distribution occupied  Caravale's intellectual energies in the second 
phase of his research, which approximately covered the period between 
1973 and 1980. All serious scholars of Ricardo's thought are inevitably 
forced to confront the Ricardian growth model that Giovanni Caravale 
elaborated, together with Domenico Tosato, in those years.  The essential 
elements of the model were first published in Italianin 1974 (Un Modello 
Ricardiano di Sviluppo Economico, Boringhieri, Torino) and then expanded 
in the English version of the book, published in 1980 (Ricardo and the 
Theory of Value, Distribution and Growth, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 
London). The book provides the analytical identification of the general 
solution, i.e. not subject to the limitations of the labor theory of 
value, of Ricardo's central problem:  the relationship between 
agricultural diminishing returns and the general rate of profit.  The 
book contains also a remarkable analysis of the role that the notion of 
"standard commodity" plays  in the evolution of Ricardo's thought, an 
analysis that the authors had previously published in Italian in a 
brilliant article which appeared in 1978 on the Rivista di Politica 
Economica ("Saggio di Profitto e Merce Tipo nella teoria di Ricardo"). 
 
>From the early 1980s until 1990 Caravale took on the difficult task of 
critical presentation of the most important interpretative strands of 
Ricardo's and Marx's thoughts.  This third phase of his intellectual 
effort was devoted to a long editorial work aiming at contrasting in a 
clear and constructive way the various attempts that have        been 
made to evaluate Ricardo's and Marx's contributions in the light of the   
 recent developments in economic theory.  The Legacy of Ricardo, 
published by Blackwell in 1985, and Marx and Modern Economic Analysis, 
published by Elgar in 1991, offer to the readers a view of the positions 
held by distinguished contributors such as John Hicks, Samuel Hollander, 
Mark Blaug,  Pierangelo Garegnani, Paul Samuelson, William Baumol and by 
Caravale himself. 
 
In recent years, Caravale started to feel the need to work on some 
unresolved Keynesian questions and on the development of a 
non-neoclassical and non-neoRicardian research program.  This was 
characterized by a strict link among economic analysis, history of 
economic thought and economic policy.  In this task Giovanni Caravale was 
forced to tackle some thorny methodological and analytical questions 
connected with the possibility of identifying a new, more constructive, 
notion of equilibrium.  His notion has both a classical and a Keynesian 
flavor, and is free from both apologetic and critical implications. It is 
a simplified representation of the dominant forces and a potential center 
of gravity of the economy.  The collection of essays he edited on this 
matter for the Italian publisher Il Mulino (Equilibrio e Teoria Economica, 
1994) has been translated in English (Equilibrium and Economic Theory) and 
has just been published by Routledge. 
 
Giovanni Caravale's most recent articles on the importance of uncertainty 
and expectations in the identification of a Keynesian unemployment 
equilibrium ("Keynes, Equilibrium and Modern Economic Systems," in 
Perspectives on the History of Economic Thought, edited by R. F. Hebert, 
Elgar, 1993), on  the role of demand in the  classical context ("Demand 
Conditions and the Interpretation of Ricardo," Journal of the History of 
Economic Thought, 1994; and "Prices and Quantities: Walras, Sraffa and 
Beyond", Studi Economici, 1994), and on the role of incomes policy ("On a 
Recent Change in the Notion of Incomes Policy," in New Keynesian 
Economics/Post-Keynesian Alternatives, edited by R.Rotheim, Routledge 
forthcoming), are all expression of his conviction that the future of 
economics depends on the positive solution of a fundamental problem: the 
integration within the discipline of analytical rigor and of relevance of 
the models.  In line with this tenet he recently addressed the general 
aspects of the relations between institutions and economic theorizing 
("Economic Theory and Institutions: An Introductory Note," Atlantic 
Economic Journal, 1996) and initiated a PhD course on "Political Economy 
and Institutional Reality."  This represents the last effort of a 
distinguished scholar and extraordinary teacher.   
 
He was always ready to listen to other people's arguments but was also 
careful to warn his students against empty technicality on the one hand 
and unrigorous critical positions on the other. 
 
Sergio Nistico' 
Universita' di Roma "La Sapienza" 
Dipartimento di Teoria Economica 
Facolta' di Scienze Politiche 
 
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