The uncertainty surrounding economic forecasts is generally related to multiple sources of risks, of domestic and foreign origin. This paper studies the predictive distribution of Italian GDP growth as a function of selected risk indicators, related to both financial and real economic...

This paper estimates the impact of university teachers on their students' academic achievement and labor market outcomes using administrative data from Bocconi University matched with Italian tax records. The estimation exploits the random allocation of students to teachers in a fixed sequence...

The Bank of Italy quarterly econometric model (BIQM) is a large-scale ‘semi structural' macro-econometric model. It tries to strike the right balance between theoretical rigour and statistical fit to the data. This paper provides an update of the features and the properties of the model,...

We use the last two waves of the Italian Time Use Survey to analyse the intergenerational transmission of reading habits. This can be explained by both cultural and educational transfers from parents to children and by imitative behaviour. Imitation is of particular interest, since it suggests...

This paper studies the effects of fiscal policy on private GDP, inflation and the long-term interest rate in Italy using a structural vector autoregression model. To this end, a database of quarterly cash data for selected fiscal variables for the period 1982:1-2004:4 is constructed, largely...

We test whether natives correctly assess the effects of immigration on their own labour market opportunities. We relate self-reported job loss and job finding probabilities to the presence of foreign-born residents in a native's neighborhood. We interpret coefficient estimates through the lens...

This paper evaluates the impact of the second series of Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations (TLTRO2) on the amount of credit granted to non-financial private corporations and on the interest rates applied to loans in Italy, using data on credit transactions, bank and firm characteristics...

A growing number of studies on the US subprime market indicate that, due to asymmetric information, credit risk transfer activities have perverse effects on banks' lending standards. We investigate a large part of the market for securitized assets (“prime mortgages”) in Italy, a country with...

We study how relationship lending and transaction lending vary over the business cycle. We develop a model in which relationship banks gather information on their borrowers, which allows them to provide loans for profitable firms during a crisis. Due to the services they provide, operating costs...

We investigate the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on local loan officers' autonomy in small business lending. We derive a simple agency model of the interaction between a local branch manager and the headquarters, which yields an estimable equation for the optimal...