Environmental and quality management practices are extremely relevant for a firm's development and international recognition. However, dealing with the standards required and obtaining an international standards certification involves costs for employee training, procedure documents, and...

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the contribution of several aspects of the bank-firm relationships in anticipating the corporate default event at least one year before. Using a unique dataset on a sample of 113 co-operative credit banks and about 12,000 firms operating in Italy, between...

It has often been argued during the recent credit crisis that commercial banks’ involvement in investment banking activities might have had an impact on the intensity of their underwriting standards. We turn to evidence from the period prior to the complete revocation of the Glass-Steagall Act...

We estimate the effect of exchange rate movements on firm-level wages, using a representative panel of manufacturing firms. We show that the direction and size of wage adjustment is shaped by the international exposure of each firm on both the sale and cost side of the balance sheet, similar to...

The recent financial crisis has clearly shown that the relationship between bank internationalization and risk is complex. Multinational banks can benefit from portfolio diversification, reducing their overall riskiness, but this effect can be offset by incentives going in the opposite...

The paper aims at understanding the structural features of the bargaining coalitions in the Doha Round of the WTO. We provide an empirical assessment of the preferences of each negotiating actor looking at general economics indicators, development levels, structure of the agricultural sectors,...