Infrastructure Finance in Europe Insights into the History of Water, Transport, and Telecommunications

Youssef Cassis, Professor of Economic History, Joint Chair RSCAS/Department of History and Civilization, European University Institute, Florence,Giuseppe De Luca, Professor of Economic History, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods, University of Milan,Massimo Florio, Professor of Public Economics and Jean Monnet Chair "Ad personam" of EU Industrial Policy, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods, University of Milan

Youssef Cassis is Professor of Economic History at the European University Institute, Florence. His work mainly focuses on banking and financial history, as well as business history more generally. His numerous publications on the subject include City Bankers, 1890-1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1994), Big Business. The European Experience in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 1997), Capitals of Capital. A History of International Financial Centres, 1780-2005 (Cambridge University Press, 2006), and Crises and Opportunities. The Shaping of Modern Finance (Oxford University Press, 2011). He was the cofounder, in 1994, of Financial History Review (Cambridge University Press) and is a past President (2005-2007) of the European Business History Association.


Giuseppe De Luca is Associate Professor of Economic History at the University of Milan. He holds a PhD in Economic and Social History from the University Bocconi and has been visiting professor at the Complutense University of Madrid and at the University of Valladolid. He is a specialist in early modern European finance and financing, with a focus on Italy and the Spanish Empire. He is currently collaborating on cross-country comparisons of informal credit markets, on a Spanish National Research Council project on 'Banks in Madrid and Milan under the Habsburgs'.

Massimo Florio is Professor of Public Economics and the Jean Monnet Chair 'ad personam' of EU Industrial Policy at the University of Milan, where he has also been the head of the Department of Economics, Business, and Statistics. He has been a visiting scholar at the London School of Economics, where he started his research on privatisation, leading to his books The Great Divestiture (MIT Press, 2004) and more recently Network Industries and Social Welfare (OUP, 2013). For more than 20 years, Professor Florio has advised the European Commission and other international organisations on social cost-benefit analysis of infrastructure projects.

Introduction: The History of European Infrastructure Finance: An Analytical Framework, Youssef Cassis, Giuseppe De Luca, and Massimo Florio
Part One: The History of European Infrastructure Finance: From the Middle Ages to the Present Era
1. Infrastructure Financing in Medieval Europe: On and Beyond 'Roman Ways', Giuseppe De Luca
2. Infrastructure Financing in the Early Modern Age: The Beginning of a 'Little Divergence', Marcella Lorenzini
3. Infrastructure Investments and the Shaping of Modern Finance, Youssef Cassis
Part Two: Water
4. Corvee versus Money in Water Infrastructure in the Alps: The Ru Courtaud, 1393-2013, Massimo Florio
5. The Finance of Local Public Goods at the Onset of Industrialization: Water in Paris, 1807-1925, Olivier Crespi Reghizzi
6. The Finance of Local Public Goods at the Onset of Industrialization: Water in London, 1582-1904, Hugh Goldsmith and Dan Carter
Part Three: Transport
7. Paying for the First Motorways: Italy, 1923-1941, Enrico Berbenni
8. Railway Financing before Nationalization: Spain, 1855-1941, Pedro Paolo Ortunez Goicolea
9. Railway Financing: Europe in the 20th Century, Bjorn Wundsch
Part Four: Telecommunications
10. Role of the State in Telecommunications Infrastructure Financing across Europe: The Telephony Service from 1880s to World War I, Damir Agic and Nico Grove
11. Financing Telegraph Infrastructures, 1850-1900, Simone Fari
12. The Public-Private Partnership in the Italian Satellite Telecommunication System Design: SIRIO and Italsat, 1969-1996, Matteo Landoni