This book contains a selection of chapters coming from For a Better World (First Conference on Hirschman Legacy - Boston 2017), A Bias for Hope (Second Conference on Hirschman Legacy- Washington-WB 2018), and A Passion for the Possible (Third Conference on Hirschman Legacy - Berlin 2019). The three Conferences have been organized by A Colorni-Hirschman International Institute, Rome, Italy.


Animated by a large group of well-known scholars and operatives coming from United States, Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Middle East, these Conferences provided a large spectrum of contributions on Albert Hirschman life and work, and on the wide range influence that this protagonist of the cultural scene of our time has had on managers and entrepreneurs and on public and private development around the world – from the local level, up to the UN-WB one.


Sifting through the material of these Conferences, and repositioning the chosen contributions according to a general line of reasoning, however tenuous, the present collection shows the flexibility and applicability of Hirschman’s methods, concepts and proposals to the most diverse situations; and vice versa – that is it shows how those variegated realities often lend themselves to be interpreted à la Hirschman.