Following the sovereign debt crisis, bank interest rates charged to non-financial firms declined sharply in the euro area. This work explores the firms' balance-sheet channel hypothesis on the role played by firms' characteristics and risk profile in the transmission of monetary policy. Using a...

Over the last decade and a half non-financial corporations' (NFCs) listings have displayed a heterogeneous pattern across European countries. The number of listed NFCs has increased in Italy and Spain, while it has declined in Germany, France and the United Kingdom. In Italy, the increase in the...

The paper evaluates the impact of the guarantees provided by the Italian scheme Fondo di Garanzia on the access to credit for small and medium enterprises. The study exploits the mechanism that assigns the guarantees, which is based on a scoring system to assess eligibility. By using regression...

We analyse new survey data from a representative sample of about 2,000 Italian micro-entrepreneurs to assess their level of financial and digital competences and to investigate whether these skills help them cope with unexpected shocks. We find that the financial literacy and digital skills of...