From Hilferding to Hilferding? Finance-capital in Italian capitalism, 1913-2010

This paper analyses the Italian corporate network from 1913 to 2010 by using the interlocking directorates technique and focusing on eight benchmark years (1913, 1927, 1936, 1960, 1972, 1983, 2001, and 2010). For each benchmark year, the top 250 companies (50 financial and 200 non financial companies) by total assets have been selected. For each benchmark year, after showing a descriptive statistics of the companies and the directors included in the sample, the paper develops a network connectivity analysis of the system. This is integrated by a historical and structural analysis. The paper reveals some distinct phases in the long term evolution of the Italian corporate network, consequent on some major institutional break-ups (the crisis of the German-type universal banks and the creation of large state-owned sector of the economy in the early 1930s; the nationalisation of the electricity industry in 1962; a massive privatisation of state-owned enterprises and a reform of the banking system in the 1990s) and the emergence of the technological trajectory of the third industrial revolution in the 1970s. In particular, the paper shows that one major consequence of the privatizations and of the reform of the banking system in the 1990s was a return of banks in a central position in the network from which they had disappeared after the collapse of the universal banks in the 1930s.