Galiani, Ferdinando [key], 1728–87, Italian economist, educated for the church. As a very young man he wrote Della moneta [on money] (1750), which attacked the mercantilist theory that money has no intrinsic value. Sent (1759) to Paris as secretary of the Neapolitan embassy, he wrote his Dialogues sur le commerce des blés (1770). Galiani contributed greatly to the modern theory of value and to the relativistic, historical approach to economics. He opposed the physiocrat view that land is the source of all wealth. A noted wit, he was an intimate of the circle of Holbach and Mme d'Épinay.
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