This paper investigates whether local cooperative banks mitigated income inequality in Italian municipalities after the two main crises that characterized the European landscape between 2008 and 2015, i.e. the financial and sovereign-debt crises. Estimation results reveal that, although in the...

What are the effects of local credit institutions on the distribution of income? Why should local banking development matter for the level of inequality? We focus on how different dimensions of banking development and other characteristics of 103 provinces in Italy affect the level of...

Using rich data from the Italian local credit markets (provinces), this paper investigates the impact of local banking development on income inequality and the role of the socioeconomic structure in this link. Exploiting the Italian historical banking regulation to instrument for the local...