Gaetano Martino

Labour exploitation is widespread in Italian agriculture. Although a substantial body of research has sought to explain these trends, further scientific investigation is still needed to understand how formal and illegal institutions interact. Institutional analysis could provide an original contribution to the study of this issue. This study adopts this perspective and seeks to address the following research question: what kinds of interactions take place among these institutions that may be associated with the emergence of the observed working and exploitative conditions? The manuscript examines migrant labour in Italian agriculture and investigates how migration regulations, migrants’ legal status, labour market dependency, and illegal recruitment practices interact in producing vulnerability and exploitation. In particular, this study contributes to the debate by shedding light on the interaction between formal and illegal institutions and by integrating them into a unified theoretical framework. Following Helmke and Levitsky (2004), this article classifies these illegal institutions and their interactions as competing in nature. The existing literature provides considerable evidence that supports this theoretical framework. However, the study has two main limitations. First, the analysis relies on a non-systematic narrative literature review. A more structured analysis could enrich the interpretation of the phenomenon. Second, the study lacks empirical research specifically designed to test the proposed theory. Future research should therefore focus on this task and further enrich the theoretical interpretation by examining, above all, the impact of institutional interactions on enterprises and agri-food value chains.

This article seeks to answer the question of how interbranch organisations (IBOs) can facilitate coordination among agents involved in transactions within agri-food chains. An IBO is a complex entity that establishes relationships among agents operating at different stages of a supply chain. The empirical analysis focuses on the Italian tomato supply chain and adopts a Process-tracing approach. The study is grounded in meso-institutions theory and demonstrates how the meso-institutional nature of the analysed IBO helps explain its role in establishing coordination among agents by performing the functions outlined by the theory. The institutional outcome of this relationship is the adoption of a contractual system that facilitates coordination itself. The contractual system identified provides an example of the articulation between the meso-institutional and micro-institutional levels.

The last decades have seen important progress in the economic analysis of institutions, with increasing concern about the need to ‘unbundle’ this concept and the diversity of situations it covers. It is so because of the complexity of the systems the concept intends to capture and the ambiguity of definitions often perceived as catch-all ideas without a clear connection to a research strategy. This essay contributes to the literature emphasising that overcoming these difficulties requires a theoretical framework identifying and characterising distinct institutional layers. The content of this framework is substantiated through the analysis of the nature and role of the long-ignored intermediate layer of ‘meso-institutions’. Meso-institutions designate devices and transmission mechanisms linking general rules, norms and beliefs established at the macro-institutional level with their perception, adaptation, and implementation (or challenge) by the actors populating the micro-level. Operationalising this framework relies on a research strategy that proceeds from a ‘substantive theory’ of institutions to the collection and processing of ‘empirical evidences’ through the development of ‘auxiliary theories’ designed to capture specific institutional objects. References to several empirical studies support the relevance of this approach.

Institutional analysis of rural development (IARD) is characterised by systematic attention given to the institutional dimensions of the rural development process. While different research enquiries have been developed in recent decades, which can be framed by rural development, a systematic understanding of its analytical features, research method and main results has not yet been achieved. This study aims to elaborate on a particular series of studies connecting agricultural economics and rural sociology by categories drawn mainly from new institutional economics. Therefore, the objective is to identify the contribution of this approach to IARD. Two subsequent stages of reflection are identified: the first articulates the analysis of the nexus between the concept of organisation and that of farming style, and the second makes the picture more complex based by connecting the territory, the sociotechnical systems and the organisation effectively and coherently. Finally, this study seeks to delineate possible areas of research that could contribute to advance IARD.

Governance mechanisms along the agri-food supply chains are increasingly important in a scenario of ecological transition. Under the conceptual and analytical lens of the Transaction Cost Economics, we explored farmers’ preferences towards a variety of clauses usually adopted in production contracts. To this purpose, a discrete choice experiment among 190 durum wheat producers in Italy was conducted. Results from a latent class model showed that producers were mainly interested in fixed prices formula and to join shared rules of production but revealed little or no interest for compelling sustainable cultivation techniques and the provision of technical assistance. However, these preferences are heterogeneous across farmers and vary depending on their level of education and previous use of contractual arrangements, with relevant implications for contract design and management. Governance mechanisms along the agri-food supply chains are increasingly important in a scenario of ecological transition. Under the conceptual and analytical lens of the Neo Institutional Economics, we explored farmers’ preferences towards a variety of clauses usually adopted in production contracts. To this purpose, a discrete choice experiment among 190 durum wheat producers in Italy was conducted. Results from a latent class model showed that that producers were mainly interested in fixed prices formula and to join shared rules of production but revealed little or no interest for compelling sustainable cultivation techniques and the provision of technical assistance. However, these preferences are heterogenous across farmers and vary depending on their level of education and previous use of contractual arrangements, with relevant implications for contract design and management.

This study investigates how and why the translation role of private meso‐institutions can help in the implementation of food safety norms in Brazilian dairy supply chains. Relying on a unique dataset containing producer‐level data, we combine a difference‐in‐differences approach with matching to investigate the experience of the Brazilian Conseleites. Our results indicate that milk quality levels tend to be higher in the states where Conseleites operate, suggesting a reduction in the cost of obtaining and disseminating information, and potentially, of transaction costs in a more general way.