Italian civil justice: regional disparities

Amanda Carmignani () and Silvia Giacomelli
Additional contact information
Amanda Carmignani: Bank of Italy

No 40, Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: 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 investigates possible explanations examining the number of proceedings initiated in courts and the human and financial resources assigned to the courts. As regards population distribution, regions in the South are more litigious than those in the Centre and North and therefore receive a higher proportion of public resources. Nevertheless, the endowment of resources in the South is in line with the rest of Italy when measured according to the annual flow of new proceedings whereas it receives fewer resources in relation to the number of proceedings pending. On the basis of the available information, it is not possible to establish whether the greater stock of proceedings pending in the South is due to an inadequate endowment of resources and/or to lower productivity.

Keywords: civil justice; litigation; regional disparities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/qef/2009-0040/QEF_40.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_40_09

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().