Risanamento finanziario, crescita economica e promozione del risparmio: le casse postali nei progetti di Quintino Sella (1862-1877)

Repeatedly minister of Finance, besides being deputy, Quintino Sella had a key role in the financial policy of the Italian liberal governments during the first fifteen-year period after the political unification. He acted both through a complex and overall vision of the financial system, supporting – without success – the project for centralizing land credit and unifying issuing banks; aiming harshly at reducing public deficit and realizing a public system to manage savings through the postal savings banks and the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti. Sella’s point of view – based on his strong pragmatism – reminds some aspects of the modern growth theory and its relationships with financial institutions development. We refer to the need of increasing national savings and their mobilization, in order to fund infrastructures essential for economic and social development, through State intervention so favouring the transition between a stage of financial underdevelopment to an upper stage (characterized by a sharper separation between investors and savers). These all general elements were well integrated in Sella’s view and merged in his project on postal savings banks. On this idea we want to give a more articulate reading of this project, stressing how financial dynamics (stimulus to financial savings) and economic dynamics (private and public capital accumulation) balanced each other in Sella’s view, consistently both with his public role and his personal experience as entrepreneur.