It is an honour to open this series of lectures that the University La Sapienza has decided to devote to the memory of Federico Caffé who, from 1959 to 1987, was professor of economic and financial policy at the department of public economics. Others will describe more accurately the personality, the life, the role and the scientific contributions of Professor Caffé. But I want to record here the sympathy that I feel for someone who lived through almost the same historical period as I did, preceding me only by nine years, who had often to reflect on the same issues as I had to and whose sentiments I certainly shared in many cases.

Federico Caffé was not only an academic devoted to his teaching but also a man involved in the actual problems of the time. He was a long-time influential collaborator of the Bank of Italy and he frequently took part in public debates about Italian economic policy choices.

Federico Caffé was a Keynesian. He took Keynesianism neither as an orthodoxy nor as the belief in a set of precepts ready to be used independently of historical events, but as an ‘uncompleted intellectual revolution’. The General Theory not only provided an analytical system, but also showed how public intervention had a fundamental function in the conduct of the economy. About the necessity of this function Professor Caffé never had any doubt, notwithstanding the questioning by some theoreticians during the last two decades.