Maurizio Lisciandra

Proceeds from extortions: the case of Italian organised crime groups

This paper provides an estimate of the monetary proceeds from extortion racket accruing to the Italian mafias using two unique data sets: one recording periodic and one-time episodes of extortion from judicial and investigative sources, and another one consisting of a victimisation survey of Italian businesses. The estimate of the revenues at a national level lies between 2760 and 7740 mln euros. The regions with a strong presence of traditional organised crime groups remain the most exposed and provide about 65% of all extorted monetary flows, although some important regions in North Italy show a significant presence of extortion rackets in non-traditional areas. Finally, the most exacted economic activities are wholesale and retail trade that, along with construction, overall account up to 70% of all revenues in the lower-bound scenario.

Gender discrimination in property rights: Six centuries of commons governance in the alps

Starting from the Medieval period, women in the Italian Alps experienced a progressive erosion in property rights over the commons. We collected documents about the evolution of inheritance regulations on collective land issued by hundreds of villages over a period of six centuries (thirteenth-nineteenth). Based on this original dataset, we provide a long-term perspective of decentralized institutional change in which gender-biased inheritance systems emerged as a defensive measure to preserve the wealth of village insiders. This institutional change also had implications for the population growth, marriage strategies, and the protection from economic shocks.

Binding and Non-Binding Contracts: A Theoretical Appraisal

In this paper we provide a simple model examining the choice between enforceable and non-enforceable contracts when, on the one hand, drafting an enforceable contract is costly and, on the other hand, fulfilling a non-enforceable contract is left to parties’ fairness. According to the previous literature we find that (1) the choice between the two contract settings in equilibrium depends on fairness and enforcement costs, and (2) whenever a non-enforceable contract is chosen in equilibrium it turns out welfare-improving. However, we are able to measure efficiency and make punctual predictions of how distant the decentralized solution is from first-best. Precisely, we find that efficiency is strongly conditioned by the stake of the transaction, so that both contracts allow for very high levels of efficiency in the presence of low-stake transactions, whereas efficiency always collapses to very low levels for high-stake transactions. It implies that a social planner should intervene only in the last case, even in the presence of high levels of fairness. Our results are robust and hold in a repeated game, proving that reputation is not welfare improving unless the number of interactions exceeds a given threshold.In a fully self-enforcing environment, individuals can execute market transactions exclusively on the basis of trust. However, the presence of individuals showing self-regarding preferences causes serious impediments to the development and even the existence of market transactions. An enforcing legal system helps to control for the lack of trust existing in every modern society. The article provides a theoretical investigation accompanied by a numerical simulation of the impact of the introduction of a costly legal system that makes contracts binding. Therefore, it investigates the choice between legally binding contracts, which are costly to verify and enforce, and non-binding contracts, which simply rely on trust, in both one-shot and repeated interactions. We find that a legal system protecting property rights mainly produces benefits when effort is particularly valuable. In the other circumstances, the benefits are marginal. A subset of parameters also exists in which the legal system is detrimental. This is especially the case of standardized production. Finally, reputation unleashes its welfare-enhancing properties when effort is very valuable, otherwise the benefits are trivial.

The Camorra and protection rackets: the cost to business

Based on the observations from the judicial and investigative evidence provided by prosecutors in Camorra areas in Italy, this investigation provides an estimate of the economic impact of extortion racket to businesses. In particular, the estimates refer to the total and average withdrawal of monetary amounts from the businesses victimised by Camorra clans. Further insights are provided in terms of economic activities mostly victimised, and specifically the construction sector, which is subject to a different type of extortion racket.

A Review of the Causes and Effects of Corruption in the Economic Analysis

This study reviews the economists’ efforts to explain the causes of corruption and its effects on economic performance. It consists of both an updated version of previous surveys and a rapid guide to the main achievements on this topic. Through this review we can appreciate that there is still conflicting evidence on the causality relationships between corruption and several variables such as economic growth, regulation, competition, and public spending, but also on potential beneficial or detrimental effects of corruption.

A Comparative Analysis of the Incentive Systems Under Taylorism and Fordism

A comparative analysis of the incentive systems under taylorism and fordism existing - Lliterature on Taylorism has surprisingly ignored the role of its payment systems, while the results achieved on Ford’s five-dollar day programme appear contradictory and sometimes isolated from the organisational change simultaneously undertaken. I seek to fill these theoretical gaps. I provide a historical analysis of the relevant features of Taylorism and Fordism and analyse a simple agency model with a linear compensation scheme to account for the observed differences in payment systems between Taylor’s performance-related pay and Ford’s fixed wages. I show how the ex-post observed divergence may be interpreted in terms of technology-related differences in i) responsiveness of effort to incentives and ii) responsiveness of proceeds to effort. JEL classification: D8; J3; J41; L2. Keywords: Taylorism; Fordism; agency theory; labour contracts; incentives.

The Impact of Technological Change on Incentive Provision

The Impact of Technological Change on Incentive Provision - The simple trade-off between incentive and risk, which is crucial to the agency problem, is not a sufficient explanation for the ineffectiveness of a specific output-related pay such as the contract system adopted in the US iron and steel industry during the second half of the nineteenth-century. The high rate of technological innovation along with workers’ extensive bargaining power made output-related pay a sub-optimal solution. This stylised fact unveils the conflicting nature of piece-rate pay compared to fixed pay as new technology is introduced and stimulates an analysis of the interaction between technological change, bargaining powers, and payment systems which can be conducive to a better understanding of the agency problem and the use of incentive pay. Key words: Incentive Contracts, Inside Contracting, Unions, Technological Change. JEL Classification: J33, J51, N31, O33

Rise and Fall of the Contract System in the American Iron and Steel Industry

This paper investigates the historical accounts of the ineffectiveness of the contract system in the US iron and steel industry during the second half of the nineteenth-century. The high rate of technological innovation, along with the extensive bargaining power of the old industrial crafts, made output-related pay so costly as to be unsustainable in the long run. A sliding scale, together with piece-rate pay, did nothing but exacerbate the labour problem.