In an open economy with common property resources at the community level, marriage and migratory decisions crucially depend on inheritance rules on the commons. Motivated by the traditional management of the commons in the Italian Alps, we present a model that fits the evolution of property...

This paper is an extensive review of agency theory applied to labour incentives. It introduces a generalised principal-agent model that goes through a certain degree of critical assessment. The analysis of the optimality within the trade-off of insurance against incentives is enriched by...

Starting from the medieval period, women in the Italian Alps experienced a progressive erosion in property rights over the commons. We collected documents about the evolution of inheritance regulations on collective land issued by hundreds of peasant communities over a period of six centuries...

This analysis investigates a political corruption model that builds on previous literature on corruption in hierarchies. Our study enriches the literature on political corruption emphasizing the contrasting role of the minorities having a control role of the majorities. In particular, this paper...

In the Middle Ages women in the Italian Alps had substantially more rights on collective properties than in the Modern Age. The documental evidence shows a progressive erosion of women's rights and a convergence toward gender-biased inheritance systems. We tracked the evolution of inheritance...