Credit frequently flows to the business sector through information-intensive bank-firm relationships. This paper studies the impact of relationship banking on firm entry. Exploiting Italian data, we document that relationship-oriented local credit markets feature lower firm entry, larger size at...

This paper tests the impact of an imperfect firm–bank type match on firms’ financial constraints using a dataset of about 4500 Italian manufacturing firms. Considering an optimal match of opaque (transparent) borrowing firms with relational (transactional) lending main banks, the possibility...

We examine the role played by Mutual Guarantee Institutions (MGIs) in the lending policies undertaken by banks at the peak of the Great Crisis of 2007–2009. We address this issue by using a large database on Italian firms built from the credit files of UniCredit banking Group and focusing on...

Using a unique sample of Italian manufacturing firms, we investigate the impact of relationship lending on firms' use of trade credit. We find that firms with close and longlasting relationships with their main bank obtain higher amounts of trade credit. This result is robust to alternative...