This paper explores the causality between concentration in the banking industry and economic growth. Two empirical tests are performed for Italy over the period 1991-2001: the first one is a standard Granger-Sims causality test, the second one studies the direction of causality by taking into...

By means of two NEIO techniques, this paper analyzes the conduct of a group of Italian single-branch banks operating as monopolists in small local areas (municipalities) in the years 1988-2005, in order to assess pricing behavior in highly concentrated banking markets. Both tests strongly reject...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to test the different definitions of “book-value distance to default” (BVDD) to assess whether using downward assets volatility provides some advantage to the index performance or produces adverse impacts on its effectiveness....