English

Luigino Bruni

Palgrave Pivot, April 2015

We are living in a long transitional period and a paradigm shift that started well before the financial crisis of 2007, one that is very likely to last for a long time. Therefore we must quickly learn how to live well in the world as it is today, including the realm of work. We need to learn a new vocabulary of economics and markets that is more suitable to understand the world in this era of globalization and financial capitalism. There are some fundamental words of social life that need to be rethought, or even rewritten, if we want civil and economic life to be 'good' and just. Right now we are conducting bad economics, partly because we are thinking and speaking badly about economics and civil life. Without a doubt, the following terms are among them: wealth, poverty, entrepreneur, finance, happiness, esteem, merit, bank, common good, work, justice, management, income distribution, profit, rent, corporate property rights, indignation, and capitalism. We urgently need a lexicon for a new economic and social well-being.

Luigino Bruni, Flavio Comim  &  Maurizio Pugno (edd.)
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008
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• Challenges the conventional economic approach which uses income as the key indicator of well-being
• Provides an excellent overview and comparison of the Capability and Happiness approaches to well-being
• Interdisciplinary book, engaging literature by economists, psychologists, philosophers, development specialists and sociologists

Origins, Spirit and Betrayal of the Market Economy

 Luigino Bruni

Publisher: Routledge
London, December 2023
ISBN 9781032524016
Book Series: Economics and Humanities
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Drawing on debates about the religious nature and origins of contemporary European capitalism, this book argues for a distinction between a Northern/Protestant and a Southern/Catholic spirit of capitalism. The first part of the book explores the history of the relationship between capitalism and Christianity. Going back much further than Weber’s “protestant ethic” arguments, it looks at the early centuries of Christianity from the gospels to Augustine and follows the story through the Middle Ages – with special attention devoted to the role of Monasticism and Franciscanism – to modernity. The second part of the book analyses the origin of the “southern spirit of capitalism: before and after Luther and the Calvinist Reformation. It highlights the key features which demonstrate that the Catholic spirit of capitalism is, in fact, different from the Anglo-Saxon spirit. This book will be of interest to readers in history of economic thought, history of capitalism, economic ethics and religious history.

Another Idea of the Market

Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni
Publisher: Agenda Pub, January 201
Product code: 9781911116004
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Global financial capitalism has eroded the moral economy on which all economic exchanges ultimately depend. The principles of reciprocity, responsibility and redistribution, which for centuries defined the market place, have been increasingly pushed aside by a growth model that places the pursuit of profit above all else.

Drawing on the Italian tradition of civic humanism, political economists Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni, advocate the need for a more well-mannered type of economic market – a civil economy – which places well-being, virtue, and the common good alongside more familiar economic goals like market share, increased productivity, and competitiveness.

This book provides an introduction to the civil economy approach. It explores its origins and development, examines the thought and ideas of some of its pioneers and main representatives, and explains the many different fields of application of the civil economy, from the determination of gross domestic product to the management of common goods, from welfare to the organization of production and consumption. Civil economy seeks to find solutions to social problems within the market – while maximizing human values and minimizing government intervention – rather than seek to replace the market. It is a distinct and valuable approach and one that offers individuals, corporations and governments a framework for a humane and socially accountable, yet productive and competitive system of markets.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Luigino Bruni is professor of political economy at LUMSA Universita, Rome. He is the author, most recently, of The Genesis and Ethos of the Market (2012) and Reciprocity, Altruism and Civil Society (2008) and co-editor, with Stefano Zamagni, of the Handbook on the Economics of Reciprocity and Social Enterprise (2013) and, with P. Porta, the Handbook of Happiness and Economics (2005).

Stefano Zamagni is professor of economics at the University of Bologna, and senior adjunct professor of international economics and vice director of Italian affairs at the School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University, Bologna. His books include An Outline of the History of Economic Thought, with Ernesto Screpanti, (2005) and Markets, Money and Capital, coedited with Roberto Scazzieri and Amartya Sen (2009).

Efficiency, Equity, Public Happiness

Luigino Bruni, Stefano Zamagni

Peter Lang, Oxford, 2007
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This volume has a double purpose. First of all, it follows an Italian tradition of thought that began in the 15th and 16th centuries as Civic Humanism and continued up until the golden period of Italian Enlightenment as represented by the Schools of Milan and Naples. Its main contribution to the history of economic thought is its conception of the market as a place centered on the principle of reciprocity and civil virtues. This book explains why the civil approach to economics disappeared from cultural debates, scientific enquiries and the public arena at the end of the 18th century, only to surface again in more recent times.

Economics and Human Flourishing in Historical Perspective

Luigino Bruni

Routledge, London, 2006
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Economists have long laboured under the misapprehension that all humans exist as rational beings that find happiness in maximizing their personal utility. This impressive volume presents an historical review of the evolution of economic thought, from economic philosophy to contemporary mathematical economics, and its critique of how the human and social dimensions of economics have been lost in this evolutionary process.

Awakening to Our Children’s Future

Lorna Gold
Publisher: Veritas, Dublin, June 2018
Product code: 9781847308412
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Climate change is the greatest challenge of our generation - we hear it all the time. It has almost become a refrain. But do we really believe it? What if we were to let those words settle a little, penetrate minds and hearts deeply, and accept their troubling, terrifying truth? What if we were to understand that climate change isn't something far away out there in space and time, but something that affects us here and now?

Framings of analysis

Luigino Bruni, Pier Luigi Porta (eds)

Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005
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This is the first comprehensive book on the return of happiness in economics. It still sounds comparatively unusual to put happiness and economics together. At the same time, the association appears increasingly exciting and fruitful, and quite a number of studies have been produced following Richard Easterlin’s and Tibor Scitovsky’s pioneering works through the 1970s.

Luigino Bruni

Bruno Mondadori, Milano, 2010

In the last two centuries, capitalism has reached extraordinary economic, technological and civil results, playing an important role in transforming society. Howver, it has lost on the playing ground of fraternity. That is why, today, capitalism has become obsolete. The crisis at the beginning of the third millenium (from terrorism to the environment, from finance to energy) shows with extraordinary strength that the market economy is using up every force of social and incivilizing change, because we´re paying the consequences in the area of individual freedom with the coins of environment and social relationships.

Handbook of Research Methods and Applications

Luigino Bruni, Pier Luigi Porta(eds)
Edwar Elgar Publishing, 2016
ISBN: 978 1 78347 116 4
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Offering a thorough assessment of the recent developments in the economic literature on happiness and quality of life, this Handbook astutely considers both methods of estimation and policy application. The expert contributors critically present in-depth research on a wide range of topics including culture and media, inequality, and the relational and emotional side of human life. Accessible and far-reaching, it will prove an invaluable resource for students and scholars of welfare and economics. Luigino Bruni and Pier Luigi Porta’s refreshing, and constructively critical, approach emphasizes the subject’s integral impact on latter-day capitalism.

Luigino Bruni, Pier Luigi Porta(eds)
Elgar, Cheltenham, 2007
ISBN: 978 1 84376 826 5
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This book is a welcome consolidation and extension of the recent expanding debates on happiness and economics. Happiness and economics, as a new field for research, is now of pivotal interest particularly to welfare economists and psychologists.

Luigino Bruni, Stefano Zamagni (edd)

Edward Elgar Publishing, June 2013
Series: Elgar original reference
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ISBN: 9781782545125
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The recent era of economic turbulence has generated a growing enthusiasm for an increase in new and original economic insights based around the concepts of reciprocity and social enterprise. This stimulating and thought-provoking Handbook not only encourages and supports this growth, but also emphasises and expands upon new topics and issues within the economics discourse.

The emergence of an economy of communion

Lorna Gold

New City Press, 2010
ISBN:978-1-56548-354-5
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Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Economy of Communion, Gold examines the origins and substance of a promising alternative to the current globalized economy.The Economy of Communion, which started within the Focolare Movement in 1991, involves a worldwide network of solidarity among some 800 firms that together constitute a vibrant business community based upon the values of sharing, caring and justice.

In praise of heterogeneity

Luigino Bruni

Routledge, London, 2008
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The main emphasis of this new book from Luigino Bruni is a praise of heterogeneity, arguing that society works when different people are able to cooperate in many different ways. The author engages in a novel approach to reciprocity looking at its different forms in society, from cautious or contractual interactions, to the reciprocity of friendship to unconditional behaviour.

The Special Issue of Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia on the Economy of Communion, in Memoriam of P. Alfredo Dinis, SJ., has been published

Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia - 2014, Tome: 70, Issue: 1

The special issue is edited by Peter McDade, SJ, with articles by: John Gallagher, Luca Crivelli, Benedetto Gui, Stefano Zamagni, Luigino Bruni, Nuno Ornelas Martinsand Americo Carvalho Mendes.

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The Business Practices of the Economy of Communion

John Gallagher, Jeanne Buckeye

New City Press, December 2014

Structures of Grace - The Business Practices of the Economy of Communion was written by John Gallagher and Jeanne Buckeye about the first and largest socially-responsible small business network in the world based on a work lifestyle of communion - The Economy of Communion (EoC).

The book highlights the practices of North American businesses that are part of the EoC worldwide network, whose beginning was inspired by Pope John Paul II's encyclical Centesimus Annus, and later referred to by Pope Benedict XVI as "...a broad new composite reality embracing the private and public spheres, one which does not exclude profit, but instead considers it a means for achieving human and social ends," and that "views profit as a means of achieving the goal of a more humane market and society"  (Caritas in Veritate, 4:46).

Luigino Bruni, Barbara Sena (edd)

Routledge, London, November 2012
Series: Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy
ISBN: 978-0-415-63822-7
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Max Weber laid the foundations for the meaning of ‘charisma’ in modern secular usage. This new volume argues for the importance of the ‘charismatic principle’ in history, economics and society.

This volume brings together a number of contributors at the cross section between economics, theology, sociology and politics in order to set a research agenda for the following issues:

Luigino Bruni, Alessandra Smerilli

Series: Routledge Advances in Social Economics 
Routledge, London, July 2014 
ISBN: 978-0-415-72335-0
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This book looks at the governance of values-based organizations (VBOs), which are organizations with a mission and identity based on ideals. Examples of VBOs include non-profit organizations, charities, NGOs, environmental, educational or cultural organizations, and social enterprises. The main objective of any VBO is to evolve and grow without losing its identity, which its survival is linked to in the medium and long terms.

Luigino Bruni

Publisher: Routledge
London, March 2021
ISBN 9780367762612
Routledge Focus
Book Series: Economics and Humanities
Available on Taylor & Francis eBooks
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Values-based organizations are institutions, communities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which are inspired by a mission or a vocation – for these groups it is their ideals which are most important to them and economics does not have a way to incorporate that into its analysis. This book provides a short introduction to the economics of values-based organizations.

Toward a Multi-Dimensional Economic Culture

Luigino Bruni (ed.)

New City Press, 2002
ISBN Number: 978-1-56548-178-7
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Pope Benedict XVIs new encyclical letter, Caritas in Veritate, in paragraph 46 speaks of an economy of communion. As John Allen remarked in a July 7, 2009 interview with Mundell & Associates, an Indiana-based Economy of Communion business, The Economy of communion was cited by Benedict XVI as a promising form of intermediate activity between for-profit business and classic non-profit institutions, rupturing what the pope called an exclusively binary model of market-plus-state which is corrosive of society.