The re-regulation wave following the global financial crisis is putting pressure on local community and cooperative banks. In this paper, we show that cooperative banking can play a pivotal role in reducing income inequalities in local communities. By analyzing Italian local (provincial) credit...

Credit frequently flows to the business sector through information-intensive bank-firm relationships. This paper studies the impact of relationship banking on firm entry. Exploiting Italian data, we document that relationship-oriented local credit markets feature lower entry, larger size at...

This paper tests the impact of family ownership on firms' export decisions using a rich data set of about 20,000 Italian manufacturers. The results reveal that family ownership increases the probability that firms export, although the effect weakens as ownership concentration rises. The benefit...

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether different credit institutions, and in particular cooperative banks, have a different impact on the reduction of income inequalities. By analyzing Italian local credit markets, i.e. Italian provinces, over the period 2001-2011, we find that...

New firms are often based on ideas that the founders developed while working for incumbent firms. We study the macroeconomic effects of spinoffs through a growth model of product variety expansion, driven by firm entry, and product innovation. Spinoffs stem from conflicts of interest between...

This paper tests the impact of an imperfect bank-firm type match on firms' financial constraints using a dataset of about 4,500 Italian manufacturing firms. We start considering an optimal matching of opaque (transparent) borrowing firms with relational (transactional) lending main banks. Next...

Using a unique sample of Italian manufacturing firms, we investigate the impact of relationship lending on firms' use of trade credit. We find that firms with close and long-lasting relationships with their main bank obtain higher amounts of trade credit. This result is robust to alternative...