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...

We study key vulnerabilities of the US Primary Dealers during the 2007-08 financial crisis. Dealers' exposure to risky assets drives the repo run; importantly, repos become sensitive to counterparty risk only at the height of the crisis. Further, the way in which dealers use repo funding exposes...

Amid the current U.S.-China technological race, the U.S. has imposed export controls to deny China access to strategic technologies. We document that these measures prompted a broad-based decoupling of U.S. and Chinese supply chains. Once their Chinese customers are subject to export controls,...

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...

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...