We test for emerging economies the hypothesis — previously verified for G-10 countries only — that the enforcement of bank capital asset requirements (CARs) exerts a detrimental effect on the supply of credit. The econometric analysis on individual bank data suggests three main results....

We examine the role played by Mutual Guarantee Institutions (MGIs) in the lending policies undertaken by banks at the peak of the Great Crisis of 2007-2009. We address this issue by using a large database on Italian firms built from the credit files of UniCredit banking Group and focusing on...

The ability of a country and its businesses to grow is tightly related to the possibility of exporting and penetrating into foreign markets. The aim of this paper is to study whether bank support can help small businesses (SBs) exporting at the extensive as well as the intensive margin. We...

Monetary unions generally boost financial markets. But European private capital markets have progressed at an unsatisfactory pace even with the euro. What accounts for this? We focus on an increasingly key financial infrastructure: Rating Agencies (RAs). Taking an international perspective, we...

We examine whether offshoring firms outperform purely domestic firms – in terms of efficiency, innovativeness and skill composition – in the peculiar context of Italy, the G7 country with the largest shadow-economy share. We posit that manufacturing firms – to counter emerging economies'...