This essay reviews the concept of 'institutions' used in recent economic literature concerning firms and national development, pointing out its limitations. It proposes an alternative framework relying on classical and contemporaneous sociological theory for overcoming some of them, relating the...

This paper carries out an assessment of the influence that different kinds of social ties exert on labour precariousness, on the state of health of urban environments and on the economic performance in Italy. Overall, the empirical evidence shows that weak ties connecting members of voluntary...