This paper investigates the determinants of the investment activity of Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) at a macro level, with special emphasis on the possible reaction to a financial crisis in a potential target economy. The analysis relies upon a specially built proprietary database, which...

We document the development of the major international banks since the late 1990s, analysing balance-sheet data for 27 large and complex financial institutions. We argue that balance-sheet expansion and business line diversification paved the way for the rise of the universal banking model. This...

The two recessions that have hit Italy since the end of 2008 have raised the share of non-performing loans to businesses in banks� portfolios substantially. In this paper we evaluate to what extent the deterioration of credit quality was due not only to the decline in firms� sales...

This paper explores the implications of systemic risk in Credit Structured Finance (CSF). Risk measurement issues loomed large during the 2007-08 financial crisis, as the massive, unprecedented number of downgrades of AAA senior bond tranches inflicted severe losses on banks, calling into...

Financial innovation has increased opportunities for diversification and lowered investment costs, but has not reduced the relative cost of active (informed) investment strategies compared with passive (less informed) strategies. What are the consequences? I have studied an economy with linear...

Social capital is a key factor affecting the functioning of financial markets (Guiso, Sapienza and Zingales, 2004). However, the estimation of the effect of social capital on credit markets is notoriously difficult. In this paper we exploit the recent Lehman Brothers crisis and a rich dataset to...

The focus of the present volume - which originates from a workshop held at the Bank of Italy on 16 and 17 April 2009 - is the regulatory response given to financial crises in the past, across countries. Alongside the scholarly interest of such a review its aim is also to offer some insights that...

High concentration of creditors can have two beneficial effects on borrowers: i) by enhancing lenders� ability to monitor, it can reduce the likelihood of financial distress; ii) by reducing coordination failure among creditors, it can help a distressed firm to avoid bankruptcy. However, a...

We investigate the duration of bad loans for a unique data set of sole proprietorships in Italy, finding that bad loans for female firms last longer. However, this result is mainly due to the fact that loans granted to female firms are less frequently written off than those to male ones,...

The literature on debt restructuring usually assumes that banks behave in a uniform way towards firms in distress. Using a recent survey of Italian banks, we show that banks follow different strategies when they decide whether to take part in the workout process, in that some of them do...