The first two articles in this issue of Enterprise & Society shed new light on the performance of the postwar Italian economy, an intriguing paradox for economic and business historians. Italy has been notorious for its political instability, inflation, massive public debt, and clientelism. Its political and economic institutions are often derided and labeled dysfunctional. Yet, in historical perspective, the country has frequently performed better than its more stable and “efficient” European neighbors and other developed economies. Between 1950 and 1973, for example, Italy’s Gross National Product grew at 6.8 percent per annum and its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita at a rate of 4.8 percent (matching Germany and second only to Japan). Even more remarkably, since 1973 its GDP, manufacturing output, exports, and productivity have all grown faster than that of any other major European economy.

The Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (Eni) was one of Italy’s most important state-owned enterprises, a key actor in the country’s transformation from a primarily agrarian to an essentially industrial nation after the Second World War. This article focuses on the history of Eni from its inception in 1953 to the death of its founder, Enrico Mattei, in 1962; it details how, in the context of Italy’s ‘economic miracle’, Eni played an important role both as an agent of economic growth, through the supply of an inexpensive source of energy, and as one of the tools used by the party in power, the Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democrats), to generate and maintain consensus.

The chemical industry was a leading sector in Italy’s “economic miracle,” but after remarkable growth in the 1950s, it declined in the next decade. Montecatini rose to a dominant position in inorganic chemicals and fertilizers in the 1950s, but its quasi-monopoly of traditional chemicals was soon challenged, first by the state-owned Eni and then by Edison, one of Italy’s giant electric power companies, which was diversifying into new sectors. The “chemical wars” of the late 1950s and early 1960s pitted the three companies against one another, as they competed for state support by building plants in Italy’s underdeveloped south, often with little commercial rationale. Although the “war” was finally resolved by a merger of Montecatini and Edison, the new company failed to achieve internal rationalization or to develop advanced chemical products. By the 1970s the sector was in disarray, and the opportunities of Italy’s rapid postwar development in chemicals had been squandered.

Drawing from newly available archival material, this article explores the early history of one of today’s most ubiquitous financial instruments, the bank credit card. It focuses on the managerial decisions that led to the implementation and development of charge card programs at the two largest American banks of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Even though the initial performance of the two programs was comparable, top management at each bank ultimately adopted different business strategies. The differences resulted from managers’ contrasting interpretations of the appropriate market for the credit card, interpretations formed within the context of two distinct banking cultures.

The familiar neighborhood paper boy was a product of the Depression, born of the need to boost revenues and improve readership. Operating funds for newspapers swiftly declined in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash. Circulation managers responded with one of the few resources at their command—inexpensive juvenile labor. Drawing on connections linking men and boys in the marketplace, circulation heads fashioned a gendered managerial philosophy that was distinctive to their industry. This approach, here termed masculine guidance, revitalized daily news delivery and transformed the relationship between middle-class childhood and paid work in the United States.

This article is a pioneering exploration of technological change in the U.S. foundry industry from the period of its most dramatic growth through its interwar stagnation and decline. Not only does it describe key changes in the mechanization and reorganization of manufacturing processes that helped transform parts of the industry into sites of classic “Fordist” mass production, but it also explains why the impact of these changes was so slow and limited. Through analysis that divides the “foundry industry” into its constituent parts (defined in terms of the forms of business organization and the types of product market that characterized them), the article locates change and continuity within different sectors of an “industry” that was in fact plural rather than singular.