Maria Rosaria Garofalo

Is the Third Sector an Emerging Economic Institution? Social Preferences Versus Poverty Traps

Relying on social preference theory and on poverty trap literature, this article suggests a richer and more nuanced role of the third sector as an institution complementary to the state and to the market in an economy’s development process. Social preferences are considered as the micro—fundaments of the third sector in that this promotes activities, laws, and organizational forms coherent with those preferences. The third sector contributes to overcoming poverty traps not only by spreading behavior based on altruism and solidarity but also by promoting investments in welfare services and human capital and by favoring the access of all the agents to the various markets.

Labour Market and Decentralized Decision-making: An Institutional Approach

The persistent failure in the labour market is due to uncertainty and asymmetric information, and relies on a reconsideration of the bargaining process. This process is not generated by individual action but rather by the behaviour of social groups and institutions in which State intervention can immprove the efficiency in matching demand and supply. In this framework we will discuss the ways by which institutional decentralization can be implemented in a labour market characterized by deep regional differences and by long-term unemployment persistence as in Italy. The main conclusion is that this policy option better fits the active labour policies. In fact the actual aim of such supply-side policies is to reduce the regional and skill mismatches and therefore it needs a substantial involvement of local public agencies. Copyright Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1997.

Work-Life Reconciliation Policies from Well-Being to Development: Rethinking EU Gender Mainstreaming

Across the European Union (EU), gender policies are cross-cutting initiatives incorporated within the major axes of regional operational programs, and specifically, within active labor-market, local development and inclusion policies. This is the so-called gender mainstreaming across EU Structural Funds, calling for increasing policy instruments integration. The aim of this paper is to understand if and how to improve women’s well-being and subsequently participation in collective action through reconciliation policies. These measures aim to allow women and men to choose how they can reconcile family care, paid work, career advancement, and leisure. The idea is that such a choice implies a time allocation pattern, which is not exclusively determined by market mechanisms and/or policy measures, but also by cultural trajectories, moral values, intrinsic motivations and rules (Folbre, Nelson 2002; North, 2005; Witt 2003), varying across regions and within groups. Furthermore, the outcomes of this choice are not completely internalized as individual well-being but they can also create positive externalities. First, this paper reconstructs reconciliation policies and their governance structures across less-developed regions in Italy (so-called EU Objective 1 areas) within the EU programming phase 2000-2006. Drawing upon this reconstruction, out analysis seeks to account for differences in both contextual conditions and individual characteristics, which, in turn, shape regional development processes. Second, the paper focuses on the design of conciliation policies to unveil what underlying microeconomic premises explain the expected beneficiaries’ behavioural change. Departing from the inadequacy of standard economics, whereby work-life reconciliation would be reduced to a unique choice pattern at the individual level, the paper examines those factors of subjective identities and contextual characteristics that actually affect work-life reconciliation choices, and by this way they can have a development impact (Bowles 1998, Ray, 2000, Sen 1999). In fact, the traditional public choice approach to gender policy may not only perpetuate a male-dominated structure of socioeconomic relations but it may also keep the economy working at a less efficient level. In other words, reconciliation policies may end up reinforcing a path dependent equilibrium of low efficiency, accentuating institutional, economic, social, and cultural traps (Bowles, Durlauf and Hoff 2006). By contrast, our idea is that reconciliation policies can work as development policies as long as they alter current power structures and enhance women capabilities. Building upon this critical review of the existing gender policy framework, we put forward a cognitive framework for work-life reconciliation as a driving force to development.

Industrial Localisation and Economic Development. A Case Study

The research described in this paper is consisting of an indepth study of an important area of the Italian Mezzogiorno: the province of Salerno. The aim of the paper is twofold. The first was to identify, by means of cluster analysis, specialization of industrial areas in this province For that, some methodological points are previously selected from the current approach to development economics, that focuses both on genesis and evolution of local systems, by emphasising, among other aspects, the role of the immaterial resources and institutions. The results depict a variegated territory comprising both areas of closed economy, where the purpose of economic activity is to satisfy basic needs (food and housing), and areas that display a certain degree of economic openness towards the outside markets. Many clusters with high indexes of manufacturing specialization are classified as areas of sub furniture or as areas born by an exogenous intervention. The second aim of the research is to measure the social conditions that should foster the growth of new industrial districts within different areas of productive specialization, just identified by the cluster analysis. The approach used was the simple correspondence analysis of a set of qualitative variables surveyed, by a questionnaire given to 462 businesses in the province of Salerno.

Social Preferences and the Third Sector: Looking for a Microeconomic Foundation of the Local Development Path

The aim of the paper is to endorse the principle, recurrent in non-profit literature, that the third sector is an institution that supports the development process of economic systems. The third sector is considered as an institution that A¢AÂAÂfavors, transmits and cementsA¢AÂA the role of social preferences in a given economy and, in this way, it contributes to development. The paper thus considers two stances taken up in economic theory: (i) the theory of social preferences; (ii) the modern theory of development. These two stances do not exclusively and specifically refer to the third sector, and they generally follow parallel paths, rarely being aware of each other: in the paper, the third sector is assumed to form a bridge between them in that social preferences are supposed to be one of the driving forces in the change process of an economy.