This volume compares the role played by State intervention in the economy in the United Kingdom and Italy. In both nations, the State played an important role as Entrepreneur in the 20th century but with different aims in each country. The crisis of 2008/2009 compels us to reconsider State intervention in the economy as a tool that cannot be undervalued.

Franco Amatori is Professor of Economic History as well as director of the Institute of the same at Bocconi University. His research interest in business history covers both Italian as well as international cases. He has published extensively including Big Business and the Wealth of Nations (co-editor with A. D. Chandler and Takashi Hikino, 1997) and Business History around the World (co-edited with Geoffrey Jones, 2003).

Robert Millward is has been Professor of Economic History at the University of Manchester, UK, since 1989 and Professor Emeritus since 2005. Recent research has focused on Europe's infrastructure industries and its demography, as in his contribution to the new Cambridge Economic History of Modern Europe (ed. Broadberry and O'Rourke, 2010) and his own book, Private and Public Enterprise in Europe: Energy, Telecommunications and Transport: 1830-1990, 2005.

Pier Angelo Toninelli is Professor of Contemporary and Business History at the Department of Economics of the University of Milano-Bicocca. He has published extensively on the history of state-owned enterprise, of accounting, of comparative economic growth and entrepreneurship. He has just edited the volume The Determinants of Entrepreneurship: Leadership, Culture, Institutions (with J.L. Garcia-Ruiz, 2010).

Part I: Policies, Outcomes and Funding 1. Introduction. Franco Amatori, Robert Millward and Pierangelo Toninelli 2. The Nature of State Enterprise in Britain. Robert Millward 3. Does a Model of Italian State-Owned Enterprise Really Exist? Franco Amatori and Pierangelo Toninelli 4. Attempts To 'Modernize': Nationalization and the Nationalized Industries in Post-War Britain. Glen O'Hara 5. Size, Boundaries and Distribution of Italian State-Owned Enterprise (1939-1983). Pierangelo Toninelli and Michelangelo Vasta 6. The Financing of a Large Infrastructure Project: The Case of the Channel Tunnel. Terry Gourvish 7. Finance and Structure of the State-Owned Enterprise in Italy: Iri from the Golden Age To the Fall. Leandro Conte and Giandomenico PilusoPart II: State Owned Enterprises in Different Sectors 8. Property Rights, Economic Rents, BNOC and North Sea Oil. Martin Chick 9. Capabilities, Entrepreneurship and Political Direction in the Italian National Oil Company: AGIP/ENI 1926-1971. Daniele Pozzi 10. Iron and Steel State Industry in UK and Italy. Ruggero Ranieri 11. From Craftsmanship to Post-Fordism: Shipbuilding in the United Kingdom and Italy after WWII. Giulio Mellinato 12. State Enterprise in British Electricity Supply: An Economic Success? Robert Millward 13. Industrial Policy and the Nationalisation of the Italian Electricity Sector in the Post World War II Period. Renato Giannetti