Italian Economists and the Discourse on the Entrepreneur

This article is aimed to shed light on the specific entrepreneurial archetype that appeared into the neoclassical line of reasoning during the 1920s and 1930s. For this purpose we have chosen to investigate the theories of Costantino Bresciani-Turroni, Giuseppe Ugo Papi and Marco Fanno, three Italian economists who, for what concerns the role of the entrepreneur, seemed do not accept the neoclassical dogma according to which the economic agent adapts himself to the incidental circumstances. On the contrary, they affirmed the importance of the entrepreneur’s initiative as the result of a specific view on the functioning of the economic process. So the entrepreneur moves as the first and unremittingly looking at those external or internal events taking place in the economic system that could increase his chances of profit.