Michele Alacevich

Università di Palermo

Post-war reconstruction and regional development. World Bank development policy in Italy, 1947–1967

2009-2010

Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Global Development and Finance

Michele Alacevich is a research fellow at the University of Palermo, Italy. His research interests include the political economy of international organizations in historical perspective, the contemporary history of economic development and financial institutions, the role of economic advisors in international relations, and the history of development economics in the twentieth century.
Michele obtained his Ph.D. in Economic and Business History at the University of Milano in 2006. His Ph.D. thesis was published as The Political Economy of the World Bank:The Early Years, by Stanford University Press, 2009 (originally published in Italian in 2007 by Bruno Mondadori and forthcoming in French, Russian and Spanish). He has also co-authored, with Daniela Parisi, Economia politica. Un'introduzione storica, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2009, and is the author of several articles published in scholarly journals on the history of economic institutions and ideas after World War II. Michele has been a consultant to the World Bank for historical research.
At the Italian Academy, Michele will work on his next book on the policies for regional development after World War II and the World Bank loans to Italy, from 1948 to1965. This book is the final outcome of his research program at the University of Palermo on regional economic backwardness in historical perspective and the Italian Mezzogiorno, and will appear in the series of historical studies of Banca d'Italia, published by Laterza.