The aim of the paper is twofold: to carry out a contingent valuation study of "Napoli Musei Aperti", a cultural public good provided by the city of Naples, and to explore some alternative schemes of cultural policy. The paper is divided in two parts. In the first one some results from the...

Local Authorities Funds for decades. New Patrons have crowded the fund-giving scenario with new expertise and subsidiary roles lately. Among them, Bank Foundations today represent the most deeply involved Italian Cultural Patron. Next to other grant-making foundations, Public Administrations,...

The paper provides a qualitative assessment of the role mainstream economic theory had in orienting Italy's banking legislation from its political unification (1861) to the introduction of the 1936 Banking Act. Five regulatory regimes are considered. Whilst market discipline and self-regulation...

We use exogenous variation in the degree of restrictions to bank competition across Italian provinces to study both the effects of bank regulation and the impact of deregulation. We find that where entry was more restricted the cost of credit was higher and - contrary to expectations- access to...

This paper explores the secular tradition of public banking in Southern Italy, focusing in particular on the nineteenth century. In its long history, Southern public banking took different forms, characterised by different degrees of centralisation, of control exercised by local or state...