Giulio Alessio

Giulio Alessio was professor of finance and, after 1920, political economy at the University of Padua for more than fifty years. He was not yet thirty when he produced his two volume study of the evolution of the Italian taxation system between 1861 and approximately 1900. It was one of several works that he wrote which became mainstream texts during and beyond the first half of the twentieth century. He also entered national politics, serving between 1897 and 1924 as a deputy of the Italian Parliament). As political parties developed in Italy, he became a member of the Radical Party. He accepted several ministerial appointments in centre-left governments between 1920 and the coming to power in 1922 of Benito Mussolini, whose tactics and policies he excoriated.