Social entrepreneurship has been recognized as a helpful instrument of social and economic policy. The European Commission, namely, has recognized very early the importance of social organizations on economic growth and social innovation, through their contribution for the development of...

Many scholars, since the early 2000s, advocate for the integration of institutionalist and communitarian views of social capital generation in order to explain civil society dynamics, in particular in countries ? such as former communist states - characterized by transitional processes, with a...

Social businesses that solve local social problems using business methods have gained attention lately. Using information and communication technology (ICT) to solve social problems is expected to create social innovation that is compatible with social missions and business feasibility; however,...

The current empirical entrepreneurship literature mainly shows a positive correlation between entrepreneurship (measured as the number of startups) and economic growth. However, the mechanisms by which entrepreneurship exerts its positive influence are not obvious. The net result of startups on...

Since Putnam's work on social capital, the Italian regional case has been a very rich source of both data and theories about the origins of large and persistent differences in local stocks of social capital, and about the impact of such differences on economic performances. The Italian case is...

Every European Union enlargement has deepened economical divergence between member states and their regions. However, the economic aspect of this issue is only a part of a broad scope of reasons of its internal diversity, including also social, cultural or cognitive dimensions. The history of so...