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This paper examines the evolution of consumption practices in Venice in the long eighteenth century through the combined use of post‐mortem inventories and household budgets. Although Italy experienced a period of relative decline between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, our findings suggest that Venetian households enjoyed a rich and vibrant material culture that was fully comparable with those of the most advanced European urban economies. However, although new products, practices, and fashions were adopted by Venetian society, the architecture of consumption did not undergo sudden and extreme changes; rather, consumption was gradually refined, following the path that it had begun during the Renaissance. We therefore argue that the Venetian economy did not experience a consumer revolution but, instead, consumer evolution. Moreover, this study shows that sophisticated consumption practices were not exclusive to the more dynamic economies of the continent but were widespread even in those regions that were victims of the Little Divergence. We thus suggest that the relationship between consumption development and economic development was not necessarily causal and that the diffusion of new consumption practices throughout society was a necessary, but insufficient, prerequisite for economic take‐off. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wine cooperatives were relatively scarce in Europe before the Second World War, but by the 1980s accounted for more than half of all wines made in France, Italy, and Spain, the three major producer countries. Unlike Danish dairy cooperatives, whose success before the First World War was linked to their ability to improve product quality and compete in high-value niche markets, wine cooperatives are often associated with the production of large volumes of low-quality products. This article argues that the initial slow diffusion of wine cooperatives was caused by the difficulties of improving quality due to environmental conditions in European vineyards ('terroir') and measurement problems, rather than institutional shortcomings. Cooperatives only became widespread when the state found them a useful instrument to regulate markets, especially after 1950. The problems associated with poor wine quality were never resolved, and cooperatives have become increasingly uncompetitive in the market place, especially following the major decline in per capita consumption and shift towards premium wines from the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents value added estimates for the Italian regions, in benchmark years 1891–1951, which are linked to those from official figures available from 1971 on, in order to offer a long-term picture of Italy’s regional development. Regional activity rates and productivity are also discussed and compared. Some basic questions about Italy’s economic history are briefly considered, including the origins and extent of the north–south divide, the role of migration and regional policy in shaping the pattern of regional inequality, and the positioning of Italy in the international debate on regional convergence, where it stands out because of the long-run persistence of its disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores some reasons as to why Florence, Italy was ever able to establish a position of clear primacy in the trade of southern Italy. This exploration has been conducted not by the direct comparison between Florentines and their rivals, but by looking at internal strengths and weaknesses in the link between Florence and Naples, Italy--strengths which reduced southern reliance on Florence's real and potential rivals, weaknesses which created especially close bonds of economic interdependence. Scholars have long been aware that the scale of the relationship between Florence and Naples was unusually great. Some areas of Florentine success have been indicated in banking, in commerce, in office-holding, in land-getting, in culture too. But it is also necessary to present the Florentine balance-sheet keeping alive the question what specific advantage Florence derived from the south. The first point that must be made is that Florence was well suited to pay for the grain, oil, and livestock it bought in the south. It is abundantly clear that the Florentines paid for these goods by exporting finished cloth to southern Italy. A second consideration was the dependence of Florence on outside food supplies.

The article focuses on the commercial development of Ancona, Italy between 1479 and 1551. The description of the changes that occurred in the commerce of Ancona is divided into three main periods. A base period, 1479-84, is first described and is then compared with two periods of the first half of the sixteenth century, 1500-27 and 1541-51. The first of these two latter periods is one of fairly rapid development whilst the second is one of consolidation of the earlier changes. Although overall there was very considerable commercial development in the city, this development seems to have had remarkably little effect on the basic economy of the city. Commercial development did not lead as it did elsewhere to much industrial and agricultural change, but was rather superimposed on an existing framework which probably remained similar in its outlines throughout. Ancona's contribution to trade outside the Adriatic consisted almost entirely of the dispatch of two or three ships each year to the eastern Mediterranean principally to Constantinople or Alexandria.