In this paper we provide new evidence on the relationship between market concentration in the banking industry and firm dynamics. In Italy, in the case of a banking merger or acquisition, the antitrust authorities can require the sale of bank branches if the joint market share of the banks...

We study how net employment growth rates differ by firm age and size. For this purpose, we exploit a long panel dataset collecting information for all Italian private firms with at least one employee. We find that firm size is not a crucial determinant of firm growth, once age is controlled for....

We estimate the effects of a simplification in the bureaucratic regulation for doing business on firm demographics in Italy, where a 2011 legislation reform required all municipalities to institute a one-stop shop for doing business. We use data for all Italian firms active in private...

Productivity is the main factor holding back long-term economic growth in Italy. Since the second half of the 1990s, productivity growth has been feeble both by historical standards and compared with the other main euro area countries. Understanding the reasons for such a performance and finding...

We provide the first thorough investigation of the effect of anti-money laundering inspections on banks' reporting of suspicious transactions. We do so by using highly detailed data from Bank of Italy and UIF (Italian authority for anti-money laundering), which include information on i) on-site...

Using micro-data on firm-specific borrowing costs and wages, we demonstrate that distortions in firms' policies can be empirically measured using firm-level gaps between marginal revenue products and user costs (MRP-cost gaps). We estimate MRP-cost gaps for 4.7 million firm-year observations in...

We study growth dynamics of firms before and during the financial crisis. We find that firms born during the recession display lower growth overtime in capital, employment and revenue, despite being more productive at entry than those born in normal times. We show that this pattern can be...

We show that the credit crunch of 2007-2013 favoured the adoption by startups of more efficient, intangible-intensive technologies. Using data for the universe of Italian corporations, we document that the cohorts of firms born during the crisis significantly increased their share of intangible...