The legal system can be treated as a large market where justice is traded in terms of legal disputes. Empirical evidence underlines that demand for legal assistance raises over time, despite high costs connected to filing, not only in Italy but also elsewhere in Europe. Moreover, the demand for...

Early Modern historians have long been fascinated by the mercantile world of the late medieval and early modern periods. The reason for their fascination can be ascribed to the wealth, cosmopolitism, social capital and political clout that many of these merchants (mostly men) projected onto...

In this paper we investigate the relationship between the number of lawyers and civil litigation across Italian provinces over the period 2000-2005. First, we document the existence of a positive correlation between the number of lawyers and litigation. We then employ a 2SLS approach to verify...

This paper highlights the effects of heterogeneous institutional contexts on transnational professional service firms, a relatively understudied issue. Specifically the paper provides empirical analysis of how the specificities of the Italian institutional context affect the activities of...