Emilio Ravenna: contributo dottrinale di uno studioso nel passaggio dalla Scuola del Cerboni a quella del Besta

This article is aimed at describing the salient tracts of the thought of Emilio Ravenna, a scholar who lived the transition from the Tuscan School of Cerboni to the Venetian School of Besta (during the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth). During this time, Italy is at the beginning of its industrialization, with a manufacturing base still predominantly made up of small and medium-sized companies and not yet characterized by high levels of dynamism. On the contrary, there is a wide and heated debate in the literature between the Tuscan School of Cerboni and the Venetian School of Besta. Ravenna shares Cerboni’s theories regarding the concepts of accounting, firm and account, always comparing them with Besta’s thought without the polemical attitude of a lot of his contemporaries. Then, the scholar gets near to the theories of the Venetian School, but without changing actually the principles of his thought. This shows, firstly, its consistency with respect to the previous works, but on the other, its inability to understand the deep changes affecting the socio economic environment and the inadequacy of Cerboni’s theories. In any case, taking into account the time of the Ravenna’s publications, the state of knowledge and the doctrinal relevance of its contemporary scholars, some interesting ideas can also be found in its writings, like the reference to the existence of intangibles considered as constituent elements of the corporate asset. However, the author does not develop adequately these ideas.