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...

We investigate the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the role played by credit constraints in the transmission mechanism, using a novel survey of expectations and plans of Italian firms, taken just before and after the outbreak. Most firms revise downward their expectations for...

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....

This paper explores how value-chain governance affects the innovation performance of suppliers of intermediate products. We take advantage of a unique dataset of Italian firms to identify governance regimes along suppliers’ technological capabilities and the level of explicit coordination in...

We test whether adverse changes to banks' market valuations during the financial and sovereign debt crises, and the associated increase in banks' cost of funding, affected firms' real decisions. Using new data linking over 3,000 non-financial Italian firms to their bank(s), we find that...

Financial frictions may represent a severe obstacle for firms' innovative activity. This paper shows the existence and quantifies the effect of binding financial constraints on the innovation propensity of Italian companies. Once provided a rich baseline specification for innovation, I analyze...

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,...

Financial frictions represent a severe obstacle to firm innovativeness. The paper explores this link in times of crisis and provides new insights on the role of relationship lending for small and micro-sized firms. Not only small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have a lower probability to innovate...