We rationalize several facts emerging from the recent empirical research on cooperatives owned by workers (workers' firms, WF) as: the concern of WFs for employment; the interplay between membership and workplace safeguard within WFs; the different reaction to shocks between WFs and...

We rationalize several facts emerging from the recent empirical research on cooperatives owned by workers (workers’ firms, WF) as: the concern of WFs for employment; the interplay between membership and workplace safeguard within WFs; the different reaction to shocks between WFs and...

We present a statistical analysis of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Italian micro enterprises. Within the period we are examining (2012-2021), our primary focus will be on the last two years. We will show that, overall, cooperatives have been more severely affected than capitalist...

We study the incentives towards horizontal merger among firms when the amount of capital is the strategic variable. The type of firms we focus on is workers' cooperatives, but our conclusions apply also to employment-constrained profit maximisers. Within a simple oligopoly model, we prove that...

A well established belief both in the game-theoretic IO and in policy debates is that market concentration facilitates collusion. We show that this piece of conventional wisdom relies upon the assumption of profit-seeking behaviour, for it may be reversed when firms pursue other plausible goals....