The paper studies the motivations behind banks’ shareholding of non-financial firms using a panel of large Italian companies in the period 1994-2000. Empirical evidence shows that banks are shareholders of companies that are less profitable, have experienced slower growth, are more indebted...

The paper studies the motivations behind banks' shareholding of non-financial firms using a panel of large Italian companies in the period 1994-2000. Empirical evidence shows that banks are shareholders of companies that are less profitable, have experienced slower growth, are more indebted, are...

Post-war Italy provides an interesting case to test for recent contributions on economic growth which play down the relevance of physical capital per se and stress its complementarity with infrastructure and less tangible factors such as finance and human capital. In truth, behind the remarkable...

This article investigates the reaction of the Federal Reserve to developments in the stock market. The issue is analysed by first constructing an Index of Stock Price Misalignment (ISPM) in which the fundamental value of the stocks is computed on the basis of the discounted cash flow approach...

We study the regime of multiple note issuers that characterized the Italian monetary system from the unification of Italy in 1861 to the creation of the Bank of Italy in 1893. We describe how the system evolved and we analyze how it functioned by studying the clearing of notes among banks. Since...

reneging on obligations.

This paper studies models of credit with limited commitment and, therefore, endogenous debt limits. There are multiple stationary equilibria plus nonstationary equilibria in which credit conditions change simply because of beliefs. There can be equilibria in which debt limits display...