TThis paper investigates which factors determine a bank's decision to expand its activities abroad and what determines its choice of the countries to invest in. The empirical analysis is conducted using firm-level data on foreign subsidiaries for a representative sample of nearly 2,500 OECD...

Since the early 1990s internationalization has moved forward very rapidly. With the reorganization of production processes on a global scale, the average growth rate of foreign direct investment (FDI) has exceeded that of GDP and trade, and its geographical and sectoral distribution has changed....

The paper presents an overview of available statistics on the internationalization of the Italian economy. The different sources are compared in terms of completeness, consistency and compatibility, timeliness, relevance and frequency of revisions, presence of systematic biases and significant...

Using several data sources, we assess the impact of Italy's outward foreign direct investment (FDI) on local employment growth between 1996 and 2001 for 12 manufacturing industries and 103 administrative provinces. Our main result is that, controlling for the local industrial structure and area...

The goal of this paper is to investigate the link between the length of a firm-bank relationship and firm's internationalization. The analysis is carried out on matched firm-bank micro-data from a survey of Italian enterprises from 1998 to 2003. We obtain two main results. First, a longer...

This paper investigates which factors determine a bank's decision to expand its activities abroad and what determines its choice of the countries to invest in. The empirical analysis is conducted using firm-level data on foreign subsidiaries for a representative sample fo nearly 2,500 OECD banks.

During the past decade all industrial countries attracted sizeable inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI), excluding Italy and Japan: this fact has been interpreted as evidencing a deterioration in Italy�s structural competitiveness. This paper presents the results of a survey conducted...

The banking industry is consolidating at an accelerating pace, yet no conclusive results have emerged on the benefits of mergers and acquisitions. We analyze the Italian market, which is similar to other main European countries. By considering both acquisitions (i.e. the purchase of the majority...

This paper argues that the liberalization of capital inflows in a small open economy with a financial system dominated by banks may provoke a soft budget constraint distortion, because large amounts of funds become available at relatively low cost. International investors internalize the risk of...

Using data from Ufficio italiano dei cambi for the period 1997-2001, the study analyses the distribution of foreign direct investment (FDI) outflows by sector and local area of origin. It tries to identify which local industrial structures determine a larger propensity to invest abroad, focusing...