The theoretical legacy of Augusto Graziani

Augusto Graziani (1933–2014) was one of the most eminent Italian economists of the twentieth century. He is internationally known as the founding father of the theory of monetary circuit. His contributions to economic theory went beyond the circuit, especially in the early part of his career. They included both other theoretical areas (for example, a critical review of Walras’s general equilibrium model) and the analysis of the ‘uneven development’ of the Italian economy. Even his approach to ‘circuitism’ was quite original and cannot be reduced to a special branch of post-Keynesianism. This introduction to the symposium on ‘The Economics of Augusto Graziani’ highlights some key points of his heretical thinking, and gives a quick summary of the papers that follow.