A counterfactual analysis of the bank-industry relationship in Italy, 1913-1936

Until the Banking reform in 1936, banks and industrial companies in Italy were strongly intertwined (both in terms on ownership and interlocking directorates). Using Imita.db – a large a dataset containing data on over 300,000 directors of Italian joint stock companies – this paper analyses what would have happened to the Italian corporate network in the years 1913, 1921, 1927 and 1936 if the “mixed banks” and their directors would have not been there. Our experiments show that new centers of the system would have emerged (financial and electricity and phone companies), confirming the interconnected nature of the Italian capitalism. We also analyze two industries, textiles and iron and steel, characterized by different labor-to-capital intensities to check for sectoral differences. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that local banks were important in funding both industries. Overall we call into question the role of mixed banks.