The Italian Case

But are social bonds in use in Italy too? According to Arena et al. (2016), the rate of adoption of “Social Impact Bonds (SIB) is still modest. The mismatch between widespread interest and actual adoption raises interesting questions as to whether we are still in the early adoption phase of SIBs and massive diffusion is yet to come, or we are observing a marginal phenomenon”. Michelucci (2016) makes the same consideration, observing: “This paper aims to study the characteristics of the Social Impact Investment (SII) market in the absence of its enablers. Since the first SII convention in 2007, SII practices have spread particularly in English speaking countries, which are often referred to as the pioneers in this field. In these countries, SII markets are small but quite advanced in comparison with the rest of the world, and some outstanding cases, such as the launch of the first social impact bond or the establishment of impact funds, have been taken as a reference model worldwide.” After this premise, the author takes a look at the Italian scenario, as do Corvo and Pastore (2019) in their article entitled “The challenge of Social Impact Bond: the state of the art of the Italian context”. Questioning the spread of social bonds in Italy therefore makes sense, although the national market is still in its infancy compared to other international scenarios. Let us begin with an overview of the legislation on the third sector, before continuing with market data on the propensity to donate and concluding with an illustration of the most interesting cases of social bonds issued in Italy.