TARIFFE, DAZI E POLITICHE DI COMMERCIO

Tariffs, duties and commercial policy. Duty systems and trade policies were central in the reforms proposed by the Lombard Enlightenment economists for the State of Milan. This State had originally adopted a duty scheme characterized by the presence of internal duties originating from each one of the five sub regional entities, i.e. the provinces of the State. That means that the single provinces treated the commodities coming from other provinces of the State not as home items but as if they were commodities coming from abroad. In 1764 the Vienna government established a special commission with a view to change the system. The Commission included a young Milanese patrician, Pietro Verri, the author of Considerazioni sul commercio dello Stato di Milano (Reflections on trade in the State of Milan). The treatise was highly appreciated in Vienna since it was the first to show the relation between the tariffs and the trade balance or the balance of payments. This explains why Schumpeter credited Verri as an early econometrician. Nevertheless, the studies carried out by Verri (together with Maraviglia Mantegazza) in 1762 did not lead to any practical reform of the duty system. Similarly, a new proposal suggesting to substitute a single border toll for the whole host of internal duties, did not produce any practical result. The proposal was based on a new study of the balance of trade completed in August 1773. Finally, Verri had no role in the reform adopted later in 1786, even if that was conceived on the basis of principles he had himself stated in his second attempt. But the balance of trade from which the reform was designed had been produced by Baldassarre Scorza, who was rated inferior to Verri as an ‘enlightened’ political economist.