Detecting whether banks’ leverage is indeed procyclical is relevant to support the view that booms and crises may be reinforced by some sort of supply side financial accelerator, whilst finding a plausible explanation of banks’ behaviour is crucial to trace the road for a sensible reform of...

Labor mobility is commonly taken as a property of an optimal currency area. But how does that property a¤ect the outcome of fiscal policies? We address this issue with a two country ?two period model, where both asymmetric and symmetric productivity shocks may hit the countries. We show that...

We estimate the standard costs in the Italian local bus transport system by means of a top down approach. Commercial speed results the most important cost driver, while economies of scale are low and only present in the case of small transport operators. Medium sized and large operators exhibit...

Labor mobility is commonly taken as a property of an optimal currency area. But how does that property a¤ect the outcome of fiscal policies? We address this issue with a two country ?two period model, where both asymmetric and symmetric productivity shocks may hit the countries. We show that...

This paper investigates the role of off-balance sheet securitization on US bank leverage pro-cyclicality. Effective leverage (taking into account off-balance sheet securitization) is especially relevant for the US, where GAAP accounting rules for securitization allowed until 2009 a...