This paper investigates the consequences of the going public decision for the growth of Italian firms using US firms as a benchmark for comparison. We find Italian firms conducting IPOs are larger than US firms, but raise fewer funds from the IPO and grow more slowly afterwards. We also compare...

Italian industrial structure and financial markets have several distinct features. Italian firms are relatively small, few trade publicly and no corporate bond market exists. The limited types of external funds available to Italian firms makes them prone to financing constraints. We examine a...

This paper investigates whether financial pressure has an impact on the performance of state-owned firms. By combining different theoretical frameworks, we explore the conditions under which debt discipline becomes effective even for state firms. Using a panel of 1318 Italian state and private...

This paper examines the long-standing theory that small firm growth is often constrained by the quantity of internal finance. Under plausible assumptions, when financing constraints are binding, an additional dollar of internal finance should generate slightly more than an additional dollar of...

Highly variable returns, asymmetric information and a lack of collateral should cause small high-tech firms to have poor access to debt. New equity financing has several advantages over debt, but may be costly compared to internal finance. We examine an unbalanced panel of over 2,400 publicly...