1,721,139 research outputs found
Il commento di Martino Paolo Nibia alla Commedia. 1. L'Inferno
No full textDescrizione e analisi del commento alla Commedia di Martino Paolo Nibia (Nidobeato), in particolare della parte relativa alla prima cantica, pubblicato a Milano nel 1478. La ricerca ha permesso di dimostrare il valore e l'originalità dell'opera che riproponendo le chiose trecentesce di Jacopo della Lana le arricchisce con contributi personali e tratti da altri autori
Reassessing the Italian “Economic Miracle”: Law, Firms’ Governance, and Management, 1950-1973
Full text linkThis article revisits and reassesses the evolution of Italian capitalism during the so called “economic miracle” (1950–1973). Using original sources, it analyzes how the average small, private firm, representing the vast majority of Italian businesses at the time, struggled to fully develop, grow, and modernize. The paper identifies the main source of the problem in a set of inefficient (or poorly-enforced) laws and regulations that allowed firms to remain competitive, and business owners to extract resources out of them, using a wide variety of borderline strategies. This article also claims that accountants (commercialisti) had a key role in implementing these strategies
Politics, society, and culture in the world of production: some reflections on Francesca Carnevali’s legacy
No full textWealthy by accident? Firm structure, institutions and economic performance in 150 (+3) years of Italian history: Introduction to the special forum
No full textIn the century and half since its 1861 unification, Italy has left the periphery of the world economy and reached a level of wealth close to that of industrialized core Western countries. Since the 1990s, however, the process of globalization has exposed the weakness of the Italian productive system, and the country’s economic performance has been one of the worst in the world. This pattern raises questions about the very nature of the Italian economy, its historical development, and its relative success in the long run, demonstrating the need for a structural reassessment of these themes. The aim of this special forum is to provide such analysis, offering a systematic and innovative view based on the interaction between institutions (conceived as the rules of the game of economic agents), firm structure, and economic performance. The main hypothesis discussed in all four articles is that Italian capitalism has been negatively affected by inefficient institutions that had a strong impact on firms’ size and governance, managerial practices, and attitude to innovate. As a result, the Italian economic performance has been frustrated, rather than promoted, by the institutional environment, and in large part shaped by fortunate contingencies.
After the editors’ introduction, the special forum starts with a reconstruction of the macroeconomic scenario (“Italy’s Modern Economic Growth, 1861–2011”), using the state-of-the-art data and focusing not only on the process of growth, but also on the problems of living standard, inequality, and regional disparities. The second article (“Institutions, Politics, and the Corporate Economy”) focuses on the exceptionality of the Italian industrial structure characterized by the large dominance of small firms. The authors explain how the institutional setting has played a crucial role in determining the contrasting performance of big business on the one hand, and of small firms on the other. The third article in the forum (“The Ghost in the Attic? The Italian National Innovation System in Historical Perspective, 1861–2011”), which provides a broad reconstruction of long-term trends in science and technology, analyzes the Italian innovative capabilities in the long run. The authors explain how the institutional setup has determined the Italian attitude toward technological innovation in the different historical phases, and suggest that the Italian national innovation system, from the unification until today, has been characterized by a peculiar shadowy or ghostly nature. The last article (“Happy 150th Anniversary, Italy? Institutions and Economic Performance Since 1861”), which also synthesizes the very message of the forum, focuses on the mechanisms on which institutions work. The authors argue that Italian economic development has been characterized in the long run by poor formal institutions, which led to a suboptimal pattern of growth characterized by scarce investment in education, low salaries, imitative technologies, and exploitative management of firms by owners who were mainly stockholders rather than stakeholders
Happy 150th Anniversary, Italy? Institutions and Economic Performance Since 1861
No full textIn the last twenty years the Italian economy showed claer signs of structural crisis. Using a variety of secondary literature, this paper claims that the recent decline must be seen as part of a long-term trend of sub-optimal performance driven by the inability of the country to remain congruent with the tecnological frontier. This problem, in turn, is the result of week and/or poorely-enforced rules that regulate economic activity. Specifically, legal institutions in areas such as firms’ governance (bankruptcy law; balance sheets regulation, use of inefficient forms of governance), banking supervision, education, and tax compliance, favoured “extractive” behaviour from firms’ owners, discouraged businesses to reach a size compatible with innovation in advanced sectors, and frustrated investment in education, research, and innovation. The paper also analyses the origin of this institutional failure and uses the example of football to show the persistency of inefficient rules. The picture that emerges is that institutional failure finds its origin in the feature of the process of State formation and, later, in the post WWII political equilibrium. Distorted institutions serve the interests of a constantly-changing minority, big enough to protect the status quo
Indici di vegetazione e dinamica di ricostituzione dei boschi percorsi dal fuoco in ambiente mediterraneo
No full textA simple multivariate analysis to assess diversity in a complex long-term managed forest area in central Italy
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Dynamics of the silver fir (Abies alba Mill.) natural regeneration in a mixed forest in the Central Apennine
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