The debate on SE has been stimulated by their spontaneous and sketchy emergence in various niches of activity and in various countries, stemming from initiatives taken within the civil society by social activists. To date, the category of social enterprises (SEs hereafter) has been studied by the specialized literature in a quite narrow way, while it can be more important to work out its general features. Different streams of analysis underline different advantages and disadvantages of social enterprises mainly linking them to the literature on non-profit organisations, but in a dispersed way, without a clear and comprehensive framework. The most relevant contributions (Borzaga, Defourny, 2001; Anheier, Ben-Ner, 2003) have been based on industry studies, and on some specific features and typologies of social enterprises. Also legislation followed the same road, focusing on specific activities and organizational types, like the law on social cooperatives in Italy that was aimed at the regulation of social services and work integration; the regulation of fair trade and micro-finance in various countries, etc… General legal frameworks for social enterprises have been introduced only recently in some European Countries: as Community Interest Company in the United Kingdom in 2005, and as Impresa Sociale in Italy in 2006. (law no. 118/2005, as implemented by the legislative decree no. 158/2006). The rationale of both reforms is the creation of a cross-ownership organizational form, which can be taken up by traditional cooperatives and mutual organizations; by entrepreneurial non-profit organizations; and by investor-owned firms when they respects the requirements and constraints imposed by law. The main constraints are imposed on profit distribution, while the firm is required to pursue a public benefit aim, and multi-stakeholdership is a governance solution that can support this objective. The implementation of the new legal schemes bears wide-ranging potentials, encompassing activities well-beyond the sectors traditionally populated by non-profit organizations and socially oriented firms (mainly social and welfare services). Fair-trade, micro and ethical finance represent new areas of operation in strong expansion, where the severity of market failures does not advice the reliance on purely commercial, profit-seeking firms, their possible higher efficiency notwithstanding. However, social enterprises can also spread in the supply of more traditional welfare services, such as health-care and education, predictably in niche areas of expertise and in the supply of services to limited and marginal social groups, where the public actor is unable or unwilling to intervene. In more general terms, they can increase the production of public benefit services. This research project aims at enhancing the understanding of social enterprises in both the theoretical and the empirical domains. The theory of social enterprises and of entrepreneurial nonprofits more in general, still finds it difficult to detect their main economic specificities (Borzaga, Tortia, 2009a, 2009b; Tortia, 2009). While the specialised literature most often highlights the aspects coherent with conventional theory, other specificities that are likely to distinguish social enterprises from other organisational forms tend to be underscored or altogether forgotten. The most widespread theories of entrepreneurial nonprofits (Hansmann, 1996; Borzaga, 2003) put under the spotlight the ability of social enterprises to: * reduce transaction costs in the presence of pronounced contract failures due to asymmetric information, and reinforce trust relations between the organisation and its users (Hansmann, 1996); * alleviate the problems and the costs linked to the incompleteness of labour contracts (Borzaga, 2003); * adapt to the relational character of the services supplied (Gui, Sugden, 2005; Sacco, Zamagni, 2006); * favour an increased efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery, mainly in comparison with the public sector (Borzaga and Tortia, 2009a); * supply niche public goods when the State is unable or unwilling to intervene (Weisbrod, 1977; 1988); * mobilise and use a mix of resources that is different from more traditional organisational forms, socialising the SE’s capital and attracting resources such as voluntary labour and donations that would remain untapped in the public sector and in profit-seeking firms (Ben-Ner, Van Hoomissen, 1991; Borzaga, 2003). A comprehensive approach to the study of the economic impact of social enterprises in terms of increased production of collective and meritorious goods and of the reduction of poverty and marginality is still lacking and this is the main objective of the programme together with the empirical test of some of the most relevant effects of social enterprises.

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