GIOJA, Melchiorre.

Nuovo Prospetto delle Scienze Economiche, ossia Somma totale delle idee teoriche e pratiche in ogni ramo d'amministrazione privata e pubblica ... Serie prima. Teorie. Tomo primo [– sesto e ultimo].

Milan, Gio. Piorotta, 1815–17. Six vols, 4to, pp. xi, [1] errata, 300 + 1 folding table; [iv], 304;[iv], 266, lxxviii + 1 folding table; [iv], 312 + 1 folding table (a little creased, paper flaw to blank margin); [iv], 224, clx; [iv], 432 + 1 folding table; occasional light foxing or offsetting; light marginal waterstaining in vol. I.[with:] —————. [Nuovo Prospetto delle Scienze Economiche … Seconda seria. Trattati pratici I.] Del Merito e delle ricompense. Trattato storico e filosofico … Tomo primo [– secondo e ultimo]. Milan (vol. II: ‘Filadelfia’), Gio. Piorotta, 1818–19.Two vols, 4to, pp. [vi], 336; [iv], 371, [1] blank; very occasional light offsetting.Good copies in uniform contemporary full mottled calf, spines ruled gilt, with contrasting red and green gilt labels; a nice set. First edition of Gioja’s major work, together with a rare work of legal ethics. ‘Born in Piacenza, Italy, Melchiorre Gioja [1767–1829] actively participated in the turbulent political life of his time, ending up in prison more than once. Gioja became a Catholic priest; however, his gospel was that man should obtain the “maximum product with the minimum expenditure of effort”. This “principle” inspires his main contribution to the development of economic analysis: the principle of the association and division of work [which appears in the first volume of the Nuovo Prospetto] … [He] criticized the laissez-faire policies advocated by the English school of political economy. He anticipated some aspects of the theories of market failures due to externalities and monopolies and favoured state intervention for correcting them’ (The New Palgrave).The Nuovo Prospetto is Gioja’s most important work, conceived ‘to reduce to a system all that writers have thought, governments sanctioned and people practiced, in public and private economy. In it, the opinions of all Italian and all foreign writers are examined. It is a real encyclopaedia of the sciences’ (Blanqui, History of Political Economy in Europe, p. 525). It is also important for its contributions to mathematical economics. In his discussion of the formation of prices, Gioja examines the views of Verri and Frisi, and Valeriani Molinari. ‘Verri … had argued and Frisi had expressed algebraically the argument, that P = C/V where P = price, C = number of buyers and V = number of sellers. But they, Gioja remarks, stretched a truth so much as to make it false. For it would be absurd to assume that, if in a city there are 64 makers of hats and the hats sell at 10 lire, in another city with 32 hatmakers the hats must sell for 20 lire; or that whenever there is the same ratio of buyers to sellers prices will be the same’ (Theocharis, p. 38). Even in unchanged conditions of supply and demand, population, circulation of money etc. (as Frisi had made clear in his examples), the relation between price and numbers cannot be proportional as a) prices cannot increase indefinitely as sellers decrease or buyers increase and b) prices cannot fall indefinitely in response to a lack of buyers or an increase in sellers. ‘Turning now to Valeriani’s formula, Gioja remarks that this has in part put sense into the Frisi formula but he denies its general validity, because he observes that beyond a certain point the increase in the number of sellers will, by reducing their collusion to zero, reverse the process of decreasing prices; any further increase in the number of sellers will, owing to their increasing costs, increase prices’ (ibid.).1st work: Cossa 6 (21); Einaudi 2574; Goldsmiths’ 21101; Kress Italian 810; Mattioli 1447; McCulloch, p. 31; Menger, col. 702.2nd work: not in Cossa, Goldsmiths’, Kress or Menger; this edition not in Einaudi.

• GBP 1,100.00 > other currencies
• ordernr.: H612.33

• bookseller: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)