forthcoming
D’Onofrio, F., “Agriculture”
In Storli, E., Dungy, M. and Gerrard, A. (eds), The Routledge Handbook for the Economic History of Natural Resources, London: Routledge.
Publications
Books and edited volumes
2025Joly, N. and D’Onofrio, F. (eds), Farm Accounts in Rural Europe, c. 1700–1914.Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer.
Abstract
This volume examines the emergence and spread of farm accountancy across Europe from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century, asking who kept accounts, why they did so, and how accounting practices reshaped agricultural knowledge and management.
2016D’Onofrio, F., Observing Agriculture in Early Twentieth-Century Italy: Agricultural Economists and Statistics.London and New York: Routledge.
Abstract
This book examines how Italian agricultural economists collected information about the economy between the Giolittian and Fascist periods. It analyses three principal forms of observation—enquiries, statistics, and farm surveys—and the way observation contributed to the formation of agricultural economics as a discipline and profession.
Articles in peer-reviewed journals
2025D’Onofrio, F. and Mignemi, N., “The making of perfect markets: Agriculture and international statistics in the early 20th century”Journal of World History,36(3), pp. 409–439.
Abstract
The article examines the demand for global agricultural statistics and the role of the International Institute of Agriculture in producing comparable figures. It shows how statistical infrastructures helped make agricultural markets increasingly commensurable on a global scale.
2023D’Onofrio, F. and Mignemi, N., “The International Institute of Agriculture and the Information Infrastructure of World Trade (1905–1946)”Histoire & Mesure,38(1), pp. 13–38.
Abstract
The article reconstructs how the International Institute of Agriculture developed systematic international statistics on crops, cultivated areas and trade flows. It examines the Institute’s statistical bureau, its methods of collecting and disseminating information, and its changing priorities as world markets were transformed.
2023D’Onofrio, F. and Mignemi, N., “Global Figures: Tools for Observing and Governing Agricultural Markets (1880s–1940s)”Histoire & Mesure,38(1), pp. 5–12.
2022D’Onofrio, F. and Tyler, H., “Wolf Ladejinsky: Field Trips for a Democratic Countryside”History of Political Economy,54(3), pp. 459–481.
Abstract
The article examines Wolf Ladejinsky’s field trips as a form of economic and political knowledge. It shows how direct observation shaped his understanding of agrarian societies and informed his approach to agricultural reform.
2021D’Onofrio, F., “Pubblica felicità, storia e provvidenza: l’Economia Civile di Genovesi nel contesto dell’assolutismo illuminato”Il pensiero economico italiano,29(1), pp. 27–45.
Abstract
The article examines Antonio Genovesi's Economia Civile in the context of enlightened absolutism, focusing on public happiness, history and Providence, and on the role of government in economic and social improvement.
2020Allisson, F., D’Onofrio, F., Raskov, D. and Shirokorad, L., “Marxism before Marxism: Nikolaj Sieber and the birth of Russian social-democracy”European Journal of the History of Economic Thought,27(4), pp. 298–323.
Abstract
The article reconstructs Nikolaj Sieber’s intellectual and political development, placing his interpretation of Marx and capitalism in the context of Ukrainian and Russian debates over economic development, the peasant commune and social democracy.
2020D’Onofrio, F. and Serra, G., “Hidden agencies: Economists and authoritarian regimes in the 20th century”Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology,38(B), pp. 3–16.
Abstract
This symposium examines the mutually constitutive relationship between economic knowledge and political order, broadening the study of economists under authoritarian rule and examining their agency as educators, propagandists, policy-makers, model-builders and dissidents.
2019D’Onofrio, F. and Serra, G., “Arthur Lewis and the Classical Foundations of ‘Development’: Economic History and Institutional Change”Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology,37A, pp. 157–164.
2018D’Onofrio, F., “La nazione meglio polita: buon governo e costituzione economica della Cina alla scuola di Genovesi”Società e Storia,161, pp. 471–497.
Abstract
The article examines the role of China in the political imagination of Antonio Genovesi and his pupils and the ways in which China served as a model for thinking about enlightened government and economic order.
2017D’Onofrio, F., “Agricultural numbers: the statistics of the International Institute of Agriculture in the Interwar period”Agricultural History Review,65(2), pp. 277–296.
Abstract
The article examines statistics produced by the International Institute of Agriculture during the interwar period and their relationship to international economic policy, agricultural markets and the attempt to stabilise farmers’ incomes.
2017D’Onofrio, F., “Micro-foundations of Italian agrarianism: Italian agricultural economists and fascism”Agricultural History,92(3), pp. 369–396.
2015D’Onofrio, F., “On the concept of ‘Felicitas Publica’ in Eighteenth-Century Political Economy”Journal of the History of Economic Thought,37(3), pp. 449–471.
Abstract
The article reconstructs the meaning of felicitas publica in eighteenth-century political economy and examines its relationship to the purposes of government and the formation of political-economic thought.
2012D’Onofrio, F., “Making Variety Simple: Agricultural Economists in Southern Italy, 1906–9”History of Political Economy,44(suppl. 1), pp. 93–113.
Abstract
The article examines the Faina parliamentary inquiry into the conditions of peasants in southern Italy and Sicily and focuses on how agricultural economists translated highly local forms of knowledge into categories that could be used by a national scientific and political audience.
Chapters and other articles
2026
D’Onofrio, F., “Agricultural experts and the rise of agricultural economics in Italy”
In Planas, J. and Segers, Y. (eds), Agricultural Modernisation in Europe, 1880–1980: The Role of Experts, Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer.
2026
D’Onofrio, F., “From the International Institute of Agriculture to the Food and Agriculture Organisation”
In Cabo, M., Fernández Prieto, L. and Pan-Montojo, J. (eds), From rural modernities to agricultural modernisation. Technologies and discourses on progress in the 20th century, Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, pp. 101–118.
2025
D’Onofrio, F., “The intentional spread of farm accountancy offices in Europe 1870–1950”
In Joly, N. and D’Onofrio, F. (eds), The Invention of the Accounting Farmer, Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer.
2025
Joly, N. and D’Onofrio, F., “Introduction”
In Joly, N. and D’Onofrio, F. (eds), The Invention of the Accounting Farmer, Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer.
2023
D’Onofrio, F., “Il neoliberalismo al tramonto della globalizzazione: D’Onofrio legge Slobodian”
Storica, 86, pp. 187–200.
2019
D’Onofrio, F., “Numeri falsi e numeri errati: le basi informative della politica granaria a Napoli nella seconda metà del secolo XVIII”
In Clemente, A. and Russo, S. (eds), La polizia de' grani: Mercati, regole e crisi di sussistenza nelle economie di Antico Regime, Roma: Gangemi, pp. 161–180.
2015
D’Onofrio, F., “Полезная история: о трехуровневой философии истории Антонио Дженовези”
Альманах Центра исследований экономической культуры факультета свободных искусств и наук СПбГУ, специальный выпуск «Экономика и религия», pp. 81–96.
2013
D’Onofrio, F., “Les statistiques agricoles de l’Italie libérale et les porteurs d’intérêts (1907–1929)”
In Fraboulet, D., Druelle-Korn, C. and Vernus, P. (eds), Les organisations patronales et la sphère publique. Europe XIXe et XXe siècles, Rennes: PUR, pp. 143–152.
2007
D’Onofrio, F., “Giordano Bruno e la favola di Deucalione”
In Catanorchi, O. and Pirillo, D. (eds), Sogni, favole, storie. Seminario su Giordano Bruno, Pisa: Edizioni della Scuola Normale.
Work in progress
D’Onofrio, F., “The experience of value and the value of experience: land valuation in the 19th and 20th century”
Submitted to Science in Context
D’Onofrio, F. and Chuchko, M., “The evolution of representativeness criteria in agricultural economics: the case of farm accountancy data”
In preparation
D’Onofrio, F., “Coup d’Oeil: An early-modern concept to understand decision-making”
In preparation
D’Onofrio, F., “The modern fact and the antiquarian: the philological origins of political economy”
In preparation
Charles, L., Daudin, G. and D’Onofrio, F., “French Grain Trade and the International Market (1720 to 1820)”
In preparation