Nepotism is considered the cancer that afflicts Italy across the board, from north to south and at all ages. The professor of Labor Economics at Bocconi University, Michele Pellizzari, and the journalist of "Il Messaggero", Jacopo Orsini, wonder if familism is really bad and their answer is not entirely obvious. The book “Dinastie d'Italia” (Bocconi University Editore 2012, 160 pages, 18 euros) it is a careful analysis of the weight that the all too common favoritism towards relatives and acquaintances has in regulated professions. Furthermore, the text chronicles the very strong resistance to reforms on orders by a Parliament made up of over a third of professionals enrolled in orders. And it is no coincidence that Dinastie d'Italia comes out in bookstores just as the Monti government is about to approve the decree on liberalization.
The regulation of professions has a very specific purpose: to protect consumers in markets where it is difficult to evaluate the quality of the services offered. As long as there is a confrontation between those who argue that the professional services market is perfectly competitive and those who argue that orders have no capacity to guarantee the consumer, the public debate will not advance. It is up to politics to choose where to position itself in this trade-off between quality and competition.
The text by Pellizzari and Orsini aims to evaluate the effect of restrictions and barriers to entry in relation to the quality of services offered by professionals. The volume analyzes the lists of members of the orders to measure and compare the degree of familialism between professions and areas of the country and demonstrates that a higher level of family connections corresponds in some cases to a worse quality of services. However, the family is also a place of learning and this book helps to understand whether its patronage or training role prevails. So what are the political implications and possible reforms? How to guarantee equal opportunities to all those who wish to operate in a regulated profession, without lowering the quality of the services provided?
“This book will serve enormously to understand the pitfalls present in the liberalization process, the risks of derailing the train of reforms", he claims Tito Boeri in his preface. “It will also provide tools to evaluate the effectiveness of reforms and prevent possible degeneration.”
