We investigate the causal relationship between judicial efficiency and firm size across Italian municipalities exploiting spatial discontinuities in court jurisdictions for identification. The estimated coefficients suggest that the reduction of the length of civil proceedings could exert, all...

The functioning of the Italian civil justice system is characterized by deep regional disparities: the length of legal proceedings is on average significantly higher in the South than in the rest of Italy. Using mainly a descriptive approach, this paper documents these differences and...

In this paper we investigate the relationship between the number of lawyers and civil litigation across Italian provinces over the period 2000-2005. First, we document the existence of a positive correlation between the number of lawyers and litigation. We then employ a 2SLS approach to verify...