According to the “Neoclassical” approach, stemming from the Tiebout model, the main advantage of federalism lies in the possibility that individuals with similar tastes, including those related to risk-aversion and the provision of public goods, can cluster in the same jurisdictions. The...

Like land before the industrial revolution, much knowledge is being enclosed in private hands. These enclosures have become a major factor in specialization among firms and among countries: both are forced to specialize in the fields that are not restricted by the enclosures of the others. This...

In biology, the laws that regulate the structuring and change of complex organisms, characterised by interlocking complementarities, are different from those that shape the evolution of simple organisms. Only the latter share mechanisms of competitive selection of the fittest analogous to those...

- In biology, the evolution of species is influenced by two types of complementarities. One type is mostly related to the synergies among and within organisms, while the other is the outcome of conflicts among different species and among members of the same species. In both conflictual and...

In standard neoclassical theory a double neutrality holds: the nature of the technical assets employed in production does not influence property rights and vice versa the property right structure does not influence the technology adopted by the organization. However, empirical evidence shows...

The last three decades have witnessed the emergence of a new species of capitalism. In spite of marked differences among its different national varieties, a common characteristic of this species can be found in the global monopolization of knowledge. This monopolization involves hierarchical...

Love, War and Culture have all played an important role in the evolution of human institutions and they have been characterized by complex relationships. War can select unselfish groups ready to sacrifice themselves for the love of their communities that they recognize to be culturally different...

The two major contributions of Ronald Coase, written at distant points of his long life, have been often interpreted as different and, somehow, contradicting views of the merits of the market mechanism. We argue that the underlying point of the two articles is the same and it can be summarized...

Some of the roots underlying the recent crisis may be found in the global convergence towards a model characterized by strong property rights and an extremely limited role attributed to "open science". The modern economy has increasingly moved from an open science - open markets model toward a...

We explore cultural aspects of globalization and provide a model to illuminate some possible effects of globalization on the politics of redistribution within nations. The argument of the paper is as follows. Globalization is an extension of nationalism (not its antithesis) with regard to some...