This paper takes advantage of the COVID-19 outbreak to explore the determinants of firms' R&D choices around an exogenous shock. We make use of unique panel data on 7,800 Italian companies between January 2020 - right before the pandemic - and March of the same year - amid lockdown policies. We...

This paper takes advantage of the COVID-19 outbreak to explore the determinants of firms’ R&D choices around an exogenous shock. We make use of unique panel data on 7,800 Italian companies between January 2020 –right before the pandemic– and March of the same year –amid lockdown...

Financial frictions may represent a severe obstacle to firms' innovativeness. This paper shows the existence and quantifies the effects of financial barriers to the innovation propensity of Italian companies. Employing direct measures of financial constraints and a credit-score estimated ad hoc,...

This paper contributes to the policy discussion on COVID-19 by presenting evidence on firms’ perceived shock in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic outbreak, and exploring heterogeneities in the associated disruption of longer-run R&D choices. We take advantage of unique panel data on...

This paper contributes to the policy discussion on COVID-19 by presenting real-time evidence on the magnitude of the shock for Italian firms. We take advantage of unique panel data on 7,800 companies between January 2020 – right before the pandemic – and March of the same year – in the...

We study the effects on financial markets and real economic activity of changes in risk related to political events and policy announcements in Italy during the 2013-2019 period that saw the rise to power of populist parties. We focus on events that have implications for budgetary policy, debt...

This paper contributes to the policy discussion on Covid-19 by presenting real-time evidence on the magnitude of the shock for Italian firms. We take advantage of unique panel data on 7,800 companies between January 2020 {right before the pandemic{ and March of the same year {in the midst of...