====================== HES POSTING =================== 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 ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]