A Primer on Corporate Governance

CHAPTER 4

Informal External Institutions in the Italian Economy

Sociocultural Norms

International taxonomies of corporate governance list Italy, along with other continental European countries (e.g., France and Germany), within the insider-dominated or relationship-based corporate governance systems, in contrast to the outsider market-based systems that characterize the Anglo-American countries (La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, and Shleifer 1999 and Clarke 2007). Within relationship-based corporate systems Italy belongs to the Latin subgroup (together with France, Spain, etc.), in contrast with the Germanic subgroup (Germany, Switzerland, etc.), although it has its own individual features and does not fit completely into the international standard ...