and Overview -- A Comprehensive Interpretation of Voluntary and Under-Remunerated Work -- How Nonprofit Organizations Manage Risk -- Property Rights and Incentives in Social Cooperatives -- The Supply of Labour and Household Production -- Working for Nothing and Being Happy. The Determinants of the Satisfaction of Volunteers and Paid Workers -- Perceived Fairness and Worker Well-Being in Public, For-Profit and NonProfit Firms: Evidence from the Italian Social Service Sector -- Wage Effects of Recruitment Methods: The Case of the Italian Social Service Sector -- The Productivity of Volunteer Labour: DEA-Based Evidence from Italy -- Volunteer Labour Supply: Micro-econometric Evidence from Italy -- Voluntary Associations and Trustworthiness: An Empirical Examination at Italian Regional Level -- A Comparison of Wage Inequality in For-profit, Non-Profit and Local Government Organizations: Nursing Homes in the Midwestern US -- Tacit Knowledge and Volunteers' Empowerment in the Fair Trade Sector -- The ‘Re-Emergence’ of Social Enterprises in CEE and the CIS.

The book provides an up-to-date analytical and empirical treatment of some important interactions between paid and unpaid labour and the social economy. The emphasis on the motivations for paid and unpaid labour, and on how these factors contribute to efficiently providing social services, gives a clear empirical counterpart to the concept of social economy. The book begins with a theoretical perspective on the development and characteristics of paid and unpaid labour in social services. Several empirical analyses, largely using novel data sets, are then provided about these phenomena in Italy, a country which has drawn broad international attention in this field, as well as in other European countries and in the US. Topics of particular interest include: preferences regarding and satisfaction with paid and unpaid labour; ownership structure and risk; ownership structure, remuneration and incentives for paid labour; characteristics of volunteer labour and its relationship with social capital endowment across Italian regions; and a comparative analysis of labour in the nonprofit sector across Europe.