We present evidence that banking development plays a key role in technological progress. We focus on manufacturing firms' innovative performance, measured by patent-based metrics, and employ exogenous variations in banking development arising from the staggered deregulation of banking activities...

I empirically investigate the effect of social capital on family control in a comprehensive data set from Italy. Exploiting historically-driven variations in social capital provided by the experience of self-government during the Middle Ages, I find that when social capital is weak, family...

It is well-known that luck increases the compensation of CEOs at their current firm. In this paper, we explore how luck affects CEOs' outside options in the labor market, and the performance of firms that hire lucky CEOs. Our results show that luck at their current firm makes CEOs move to a new...

Prompted by the shakeup of Covid-19 on financial markets, scholars have begun to explore the corporate traits that can make firms more resilient to a pandemic. In this paper, we explore how the involvement of families in ownership and governance positions influences the financial performance of...

We study how family ownership shapes the firms' likelihood of being involved in antitrust indictments. Using data from Italy, we show that family firms are significantly less likely than other firms to commit antitrust violations. To achieve identification, we exploit a law change that made it...

We study how generalized trust shapes the ability of firms with different ownership forms to obtain trade financing and perform during a financial crisis. Exploiting geographic variations in trust across Italian regions and the occurrence of the 2008-09 financial crisis in a...