I am very conscious of the honour done to me in being invited to deliver the Raffaele Mattioli Lectures, and wish to convey my warm thanks to the Banca Commerciale Italiana and to the Bocconi University for allowing me this opportunity to crystallise some of my views on the bearing of economic thought of the past on the interpretation of the policy problems of today.

My ideas are presented using the broad brush of the Impressionist. This seems the appropriate technique given the nature of the theme, the bounds set by the number of lectures and the occasion of its delivery. I have endeavoured to help the reader who is interested in following up particular aspects of my main theme by the provision of fairly copious notes and references to the work of public choice analysts, past and present, and to some of my own articles and books.

These lectures would never have reached the stage of delivery, far less the stage of printing, without the kind assistance of several colleagues and officials of the Banca Commerciale Italiana.

I wish to thank, in particular, Drs Bernardo Crippa and Antonello Mela of the Bank for the administrative arrangements; Drs Diego Piacentino and Manfredi La Manna for their painstaking editorial input; Professor Ilde Rizzo for guidance in the choice of Italian economics literature considered in these lectures; the Discussants – Professors Francesco Forte, Bruno Frey, Emilio Gerelli, Emilio Giardina, Peter Jackson, Franco Romani and Vito Tanzi – for the profusion of ideas which will encourage me to undertake further study of matters that I have neglected.