RefGov Project, Institutional Frames for Markets
SienaUnit

University of Siena, Dept. of Economics, Piazza San Francesco, 7 - 53100, Siena (Italy)



The integrated project RefGov (Reflexive Governance in the Public Interest) counts 29 partner-institutions and is coordinated by the Centre for Philosophy of Law - Centre de Philosophie du Droit (CPDR) of the Catholic University of Louvain (Louvain-La-Neuve). The research project focuses on emerging institutional mechanisms which seek to answer the question of market failures by means other than command-and-control regulation imposed in the name of the public interest. It seeks to identify these new mechanisms, to evaluate them and to make institutional proposals for an improved form of governance. It proposes to ground its empirical work in five material fields: Services of General Interest, Global Public Services and Common Goods, Institutional Frames for Markets (IFM), Corporate Governance in the Public Interest and Fundamental Rights Governance. SienaUnit’s activities regard mainly the sub-network IFM.

The objective of IFM in the RefGov project is to provide a systematic analysis of the interplay between governmental regulations and self-regulations in the building of institutional frameworks of markets. The goal of IFM is to assess the current regulatory practices to frame market activities and to better assess the multi-level governance mechanisms that should be implemented to organize an efficient mix of public and private regulation of the economy. This implies an in-depth assessment of public regulation and its impact on the ability of economic agents to efficiently organize and manage the production and distribution of goods and services, and a detailed analysis of how private initiatives lead to the organization of collective frames. Beside the analysis of the performance of market based mechanisms to provide “traditional” services of general interest, this sub-network will study how institutional frames are suited to the provision of new essential “utilities” — such as access to efficient information networks, to innovation capabilities, to standards and signal of quality, etc. — in the public interest. The five-targeted topics are the following: (i) creation and governance of competitive mechanisms in network industries; (ii) the regulation of digital and information networks; (iii) intellectual property rights; (iv) incentives to invent, accumulate knowledge and circulate intangibles; and (v) the collective governance of quality, behaviours, contractual practices and the legal environment.

SienaUnit’s research has been guided by the belief that, to understand economic activities relating to knowledge production and the circulation of intangibles, as it is the case for other domains of economic activity, it is necessary to take into consideration the organization of markets, the organization of competition, and the management of externalities. This approach implies that an understanding of more or less spontaneous innovation activities as well as of any instance of knowledge production requires both an in-depth of the impact of public institutions on the production and circulation of intangibles and an analysis of how private instances of self-regulation and private institutions more generally may influence economic outcomes. addition to this, the SienaUnit has proceeded from a two-fold assumption. On one side, it has adopted the view that to understand knowledge production it is necessary to broaden the perspective beyond the institutions more narrowly connected to the innovation system by including in the analysis, for instance, public institutions such as antitrust institutions and general issues of private contracting. On the other side, it has included in its research the analysis of specific sectors, so as to ensure that results could go beyond broad theoretical statements. A common element linking most of the analyses produced for the RefGov project, and one that is relatively novel in the context of the analysis of incentives to the production of intangibles is the adoption of a perspective that emphasizes the specific nature of innovative investments and their implications for both public and private orderings. Adopting this view has required an in-dept analysis of the issues that emerge both with specific regard to IPRs-related contracts and in more general contractual agreements.

SienaUnit is composed by the following scholars:

  • Marcello Basili
  • Filippo Belloc
  • Massimo D’Antoni
  • Antonio Nicita (coordinator)
  • Ugo Pagano
  • Alessandra Rossi
  • Massimiliano Vatiero