Università della Svizzera italiana

Positional goods and legal orderings

Pagano, Ugo ; Vatiero, Massimiliano

In: Encyclopedia of Law and Economics

People consume because others consume, maintained Veblen in 1899. More recently, theoretical, empirical and experimental articles have argued that people constantly compare themselves to their environments and care greatly about their relative positions. Given that competition for positions may produce social costs, we adopt a Law and Economics approach (i) to suggest legal remedies for...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Learning from the Swiss corporate governance exception

Vatiero, Massimiliano

The Swiss economy represents an exception to the legal origin theory (e.g., Roe (2006)). Although Switzerland is a country belonging to the civil law family, many of its public companies have diffused corporate ownership, as do those in common law countries. This paper maintains that the Swiss exception relies on the complementarity between corporate ownership and policies addressing...

Università della Svizzera italiana

On the (political) origin of "corporate governance" species

Vatiero, Massimiliano

In: Journal of Economic Surveys

Although economies, business practices, and living standards have converged since WWII, corporate structures continue to differ among the advanced economies of the world. Looking at the diversity of corporate structures of large-sized firms around the world (and over time) would fascinate Charles Darwin. This work develops a critical review of the literature on political determinants of...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Corporate governance and its political economy

Vatiero, Massimiliano ; Roe, Mark J.

To fully understand governance and authority in the large corporation, one must attend to politics. Because basic dimensions of corporate organization can affect the interests of voters, because powerful concentrated interest groups seek particular outcomes that deeply affect large corporations, because those deploying corporate and financial resources from within the corporation to buttress...

Università della Svizzera italiana

An analysis of how 2002 judicial reorganisation has impacted on the performance of the First Instance Courts (Preture) in Ticino

Ippoliti, Roberto ; Vatiero, Massimiliano

With data from 2001 to 2010 of the First Instance Courts of the Canton of Ticino, Switzerland, this paper examines the impact of Legge sull’istituzione della Pretura penale e della funzione di sostituto Procuratore pubblico (2002), which meant to improve Cantonal court performance by decreasing penal workload. Our results suggest that such law has posed non-positive effects on judicial...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Costly institutions as substitutes : novelty and limits of the Coasian approach

Pagano, Ugo ; Vatiero, Massimiliano

One of the main contributions of Ronald H. Coase was to demonstrate how mainstream economics was based on a contradictory amalgam of costly physical inputs and free institutional resources, and to gave origin the economics of institutions: each institution is a mode of allocation and organization of economic resources that is to be investigated. In particular, none of the institutions...