Pietro Custodi

Pietro Custodi was an Italian economist and journalist.

Biography

Born in Galliate, near Novara, Custodi was by profession a lawyer, but soon entered into journalism and directed the newspaper L'Amico della libertà italiana. He was arrested by Napoleon but freed after the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy and appointed secretary-general of the finance department in Milan. Later he was made a baron and became a state councilor. He died in Galbiate, near Milan, in 1842.
Custodi continued Pietro Verri's History of Milan and edited the unpublished works of Baretti; as an economist he is widely known as the editor of a collection of the principal Italian economists in fifty volumes.

Works

His greatest contribution to economics was the compilation of 50 volumes of Italian essays and articles on political economy, Scrittori classici italiani di economia politica. Many of these papers, written from the earliest times to the beginning of the 19th century, had not been published before. In 1824 Custodi founded, together with Gioia and Gian [Domenico Romagnosi|Romagnosi], the Annali Universali di Statistica, one of the first Italian economic reviews.