potential benefits for financial integration and competition. Obstacles to banks' geographical and business expansion have been … banks, but does not affect the decision to open branches of banks operating in other markets. Branching by outside banks is …

characteristics employing new data for Italian banks referring to 1998-2001. We find that banks expanded relatively more in the e …-business in those local markets where they had relatively fewer branches, with the exclusion of markets where the banks were …. This evidence suggests that banks did not extract substantial consumer surplus from the joint provision of electronic …

In the last decade the banks established in the Italian Mezzogiorno have reduced their cost-income ratios and improved …. The ratio is lower than average for the banks established in the South, while it is greater than 100 percent for banks …

on this, several hypotheses about the role of banks in monetary policy transmission are developed. Many of the … monetary policy does alter bank loan supply, with the effects most dependent on the liquidity of individual banks. Unlike in … available database, BankScope, obscures the heterogeneity across banks. Indeed, for several types of questions BankScope data …

would-be borrowers who were previously rejected by mature banks in the market. Second, since a substantial amount of the … information used by banks to screen loan applicants and monitor borrowers is generated through repeated interaction with their … these endogenous barriers can help to explain why in many local credit markets by domestic and foreign banks was slow, even …

survey conducted in 2007 by the Bank of Italy over more than 300 banks. The results document significant innovations in … borrowing constraints facing households. The supply of new products is already routinely provided by large and medium banks …, while it is spreading among local cooperative banks. It is significantly higher among banks which have adopted credit …

This paper reviews the quantitative methods used at selected central banks to stress testing credit risk, focusing in … perspective, central banks and supervisors are particularly interested in quantifying the macro-to-micro linkages and have … process of the banks' stress test models as required by the Basel II Framework. It also contributes to the on …