In this paper we investigate the effect of local banking development on firms' innovative activities, using a rich data set on innovation for a large number of Italian firms over the 1990's. There is evidence that banking development affects the probability of process innovation, particularly...

By exploiting a rich firm level data-base, this paper presents novel empirical evidence on the effect of process and product innovations on productivity, as well as on the role played by R&D and fixed capital investment in enhancing the likelihood of introducing innovations at the firm level....